Every day I take the M15 Limited bus up 1st Avenue to work. I like this bus. It stops just a couple blocks away from my apartment, and drops me off only a few steps from the school I work at. I’ve timed it exactly right so that if I leave my apartment no later than 7:12AM, I catch a limited at 7:19AM that gets me to work either 10 minutes early or right on time, depending on traffic. Any other bus gets me there too early or too late. This bus is really quite perfect, you see.
After a couple of weeks of taking the same bus, I finally started saying hello to the bus driver. I neglected this common courtesy for far too long. It’s sad that we live in a city with a huge population and yet we don’t acknowledge most of our fellow inhabitants. Lovingkindness meditation practice made me start thinking about this.
Sharon Salzberg wrote, “Think of someone who plays some role in your life, some function that you don’t know very well, that you don’t have a particular feeling for, or against. Maybe the checkout person at the supermarket where you shop, the gas-station attendant, somebody that you see periodically.”
This made me reflect on key people I see every day that I don’t pay much attention to: the security guard at my school, the barista at my neighborhood coffee shop, my super, my bus driver. I decided that I didn’t want to keep these people faceless and nameless; I would try to see them (even if not get to know them).
It started on the bus, every morning with a simple acknowledgement. “Good morning,” I’d say with a smile to the driver. “Good morning to you,” he’d say back. I later found out the driver’s name, which I’ve changed to protect his identity. For this story I’ll call him James. James is a short, squat man, probably in his late fifties, early sixties. He has a short graying beard that covers his tan skin. One of my friends from work who takes the same bus said he looked like a “Puerto Rican Santa Claus.” He reminded me of my Floridian grandpa. I imagined him playing poker with his friends.
I’ve noticed that the drivers on the buses right before and after James’s bus are the rude honkers; they pound the horn over and over, swear loudly, and give other drivers the finger out the window. To my knowledge, James has never done so. James greets the passengers with a smile and announces the next stop warmly over the walkie, “Next stop, 42nd. Cuarenta y dos, proxima parada.”
A few months went by and I continued to say hello to James in the morning. Sometimes he’d ask, “How was your weekend?” To which I would reply, “It was nice, thanks. How was yours?” All surface, but still, it was an improvement. Once he asked if I was a teacher, I said I was. He commented that I looked very young to be a teacher. I laughed. On election day I greeted him as usual and he asked why I didn’t have the day off. I asked why was he working? I was pleased with myself. I felt that I had successfully started to change an old habit. I had made this world a little bit less impersonal; a little less cold.
And then one day last week, when I got on the bus and said good morning, he said my hair looked nice. Oblivious, I thanked him and took a seat.
The next morning when I boarded the bus I said my usual hello and proceeded to swipe my Metrocard. As I swiped it, he held out his hand with a white Metrocard transfer slip. “I want you to have this,” he said. I didn’t understand. Was he giving me a free transfer or something? Was he confused? But there was pencil writing on the card…
“But I don’t need this,” I said as I took the card. There were people behind me waiting to get on and I didn’t want to hold up the bus, so I took the card and took a seat. I read the card. Written neatly in all caps, it said:
JAMES
11AM-1PM
And ten digits which, I assume, was his phone number.
Oh. Ick.
I sat there fuming the rest of the bus ride, wondering what I had done wrong. Did I do something to make him think this was my intention? Was I too friendly? Should I never have said anything in the first place? Was it the day I asked him what his name was? I was just trying to be nice…why did he take it the wrong way? I tried to find another explanation for this note. Maybe he just wanted to be friends. Maybe he’s being held against his will and this note was a cry for help. Yeah, right.
On my way off the bus I went out the front way and gave the note back to him. I figure that’s a clear enough message, right? Great, so we’d put this all behind us and I’d keep riding this same bus as usual and get to work on time. But he wasn’t on the bus the next day. He wasn’t on it today either. Now I feel sorry. I hope he’s just on vacation, and that he didn’t feel the need to switch his bus route because of this little incident. He didn’t actually do anything wrong, besides the creepiness factor of coming on to a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. And he never said anything obscene or lewd. It was just a phone number. Had he been thirty years younger, I probably would have been flattered, not weirded out. This contradiction worries me.
Now I’m paranoid. Does friendliness get misconstrued as attraction by members of the male sex? Do I stop saying hello to James in the morning (assuming he ever resumes his usual bus route)? What about the barista at the coffee shop I go to regularly? He is really friendly. I just sneezed and he said, “Bless you.” I sit in the same spot (far away from the door, near a power outlet) but it’s near the counter. Maybe I should move to a different spot so he doesn’t get the wrong impression. Should I start giving him the cold shoulder, too?
This experience made me feel doubtful that, as a woman and a New Yorker, I can realistically make this aspect of lovingkindness part of my daily life. It might just be too rough out there for me to be a bright-eyed idealist. I also wonder if I’ve misinterpreted the meaning of this lovingkindness practice; that it isn’t so much about attacking the behavior head on as it is paying more attention to it. Maybe there’s a reason we invite some people in and not others.
Perhaps I should just take the blame for what happened. I mean, I AM totally awesome. James clearly just couldn’t resist.
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