Have You Ever Ridden the Bus?

Just an essay that I had to write for a class at school. If you ride the bus, you'll love it (I hope). I really like it so here it is for you to enjoy.

Have you ever ridden the bus?  I don’t mean the school bus, most everyone has ridden those before.  When I say bus, I mean the big, boxy, public buses.  Have you ever ridden one of those?

 

It’s strange how needing to take the bus effects our whole day, our whole lives.  You have to wake up early, before even the sun, just to be ready in the nick of time.  Your alarm blasts in your ear as you roll out of bed.  Stumbling, you fall into your jeans while juggling your heart healthy breakfast, your in-house Starbucks, and your toothbrush.  Grabbing your bag, you run outside and then back in again.  You forgot your bus pass, didn’t you?  Your iPod?  Your cell phone?  It’s too late, you don’t have time.

 

Now comes the test of endurance.  You sit or stand, poised and ready, looking at your watch and far down the street, squinting to see any trace of the city’s fine public transportation.  Then it arrives, fashionably early or fashionably late, but never on time.  You step on the bus and show the driver your pass.  You didn’t forget it after all.  But why was it in your left pocket and not your right?  Who knows?  You pick your seat:  third from the front, the window seat on the driver’s side.  No wait, fourth from the front.  There is something sticky on the floor in seat three.  You sit.  You sigh.  You remember.  Your flash drive is sitting on the catch-all table right inside the front door.  You can see it in your head and you wonder how you forgot it.  You put it there so you wouldn’t forget, remember?  Yes, you do.

 

As your fellow commutees file in, one by one, sometimes in twos, threes, or fours, you watch them, what else is there to do?  Their various shapes, sizes, colors, and the occasional smells fascinate your senses.  Some faces you recognize, quickly glancing at them.  Others you have never seen before, but you take a glimpse nonetheless.  However, you never let your eyes rest on one person too long, what if they were to see?  Don’t worry, they’re playing eye tag, too.  Up and down, like a carousel, the passengers come, the passengers go.  Only, they aren’t spinning in circles, except for that one guy.  Everyone forgives him, he can’t help it.  There is that one woman in the back, though.  She never gets up, she never sits down, she is just forever there, a living part of the bus.

 

The bus methodically bounds up and down, swaying back and forth as it rolls across the asphalt beneath. The breaks squeal with every redundant stop.  The metalloid coins ‘tink’ as the people drop the fare into the slot.  The bus rears back, you’re moving again.  Another stop, you aren’t surprised.  There’s the beeping.  You ride a kneeling bus.  The driver pulls away, the door not even closed, letting in a brief gust of air.  The coolness hits your face but doesn’t move your hair, it isn’t that strong of a breeze.  The breaks squeal.  “We never get this light” you all think in unison.  In another minute, you do it all over again.

 

Finally you hit the bus way.  The sleek, white pavement stretches out in front of your gloriously dirty chariot.  You stare out the window, bored with the faces inside.  Something is missing outside:  telephone poles.  It is odd how you notice some things once they are not there.  You miss watching the wires dip up and down as you pass along.  Now, outside the window, only the occasional blur of a passing bus catches your eye.

 

At last you arrive at your destination.  A block or two or three before your stop you reach up for the yellow chord that stretches from front to back of the bus, much like telephone wires.  You shimmy your way out into the aisle and toward the front, passing those familiar and strange faces along the way.  The breaks squeal and you can’t help but lean forward, smashing into the back of the person in front of you.  As you step of the bus, you feel the stiff wind of freedom.  The bus hisses and you watch it rear back from the outside looking in.  The bus moseys away, looming over the surrounding traffic.  You turn to walk away and a block down the street you hear the brakes squeal.  You hear a pause.  You hear the hiss.  The wheels on the bus go round and round.

 

Have you ever ridden a bus?  I have.

Reviews

[No one]

I've taken the bus many times.
As an exercise, this was interesting. It's great to take a pen and paper out into the world and write down everything you see and hear and then combine all that information into an essay or a short story. That's what it seemed you did. You may have just sat at your computer desk and typed this all from imagination or memory which is also a good exercise.
As an essay- a short literary composition on a particular theme- this works.

Here are a few things that caught my editor's eye:
*Brakes squeal. Breaks do not squeal.
**You ride a kneeling bus... Is this bus actually kneeling or is the character kneeling inside the bus?
***effects our whole day (affects)
****The breaks squeal and you can't help but (lean forward), (smashing) into the back of the person in front of you.