{"id":335,"date":"2008-12-01T20:31:41","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T20:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html"},"modified":"2008-12-01T20:31:41","modified_gmt":"2008-12-01T20:31:41","slug":"the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html","title":{"rendered":"The Wheels on the Bus Go&#8230;Oh, Hell No"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every day I take the M15 Limited bus up 1<sup>st<\/sup> 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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">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\u2019s sad that we live in a city with a huge population and yet we don\u2019t acknowledge most of our fellow inhabitants. Lovingkindness meditation practice made me start thinking about this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Sharon Salzberg wrote, <em>\u201cThink of someone who plays some role in your life, some function that you don&#8217;t know very well, that you don&#8217;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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">This made me reflect on key people I see every day that I don\u2019t 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\u2019t want to keep these people faceless and nameless; I would try to <em>see<\/em> them (even if not get to know them).<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It started on the bus, every morning with a simple acknowledgement. \u201cGood morning,\u201d I\u2019d say with a smile to the driver. \u201cGood morning to you,\u201d he\u2019d say back. I later found out the driver\u2019s name, which I\u2019ve changed to protect his identity. For this story I\u2019ll 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 \u201cPuerto Rican Santa Claus.\u201d He reminded me of my Floridian grandpa. I imagined him playing poker with his friends.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I\u2019ve noticed that the drivers on the buses right before and after James\u2019s 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, \u201cNext stop, 42<sup>nd<\/sup>. Cuarenta y dos, proxima parada.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">A few months went by and I continued to say hello to James in the morning. Sometimes he\u2019d ask, \u201cHow was your weekend?\u201d To which I would reply, \u201cIt was nice, thanks. How was yours?\u201d 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\u2019t have the day off. I asked why was <em>he <\/em>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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">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. \u201cI want you to have this,\u201d he said. I didn\u2019t understand. Was he giving me a free transfer or something? Was he confused? But there was pencil writing on the card\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cBut I don\u2019t need this,\u201d I said as I took the card. There were people behind me waiting to get on and I didn\u2019t 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:<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><em>JAMES<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><em>11AM-1PM<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">And ten digits which, I assume, was his phone number.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Oh. Ick.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">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 <em>too<\/em> friendly? Should I never have said anything in the first place? Was it the day I asked him what his name was? <em>I was just trying to be nice\u2026why did he take it the wrong way? <\/em>I tried to find another explanation for this note. Maybe he just wanted to be friends. Maybe he\u2019s being held against his will and this note was a cry for help. <em>Yeah, right<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">On my way off the bus I went out the front way and gave the note back to him. I figure that\u2019s a clear enough message, right? Great, so we\u2019d put this all behind us and I\u2019d keep riding this same bus as usual and get to work on time. But he wasn\u2019t on the bus the next day. He wasn\u2019t on it today either. Now I feel sorry. I hope he\u2019s just on vacation, and that he didn\u2019t feel the need to switch his bus route because of this little incident. He didn\u2019t actually do anything <em>wrong<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Now I\u2019m 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 <em>really<\/em> friendly. I just sneezed and he said, \u201cBless you.\u201d I sit in the same spot (far away from the door, near a power outlet) but it\u2019s near the counter. Maybe I should move to a different spot so he doesn\u2019t get the wrong impression. Should I start giving him the cold shoulder, too?<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">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\u2019ve misinterpreted the meaning of this lovingkindness practice; that it isn\u2019t so much about attacking the behavior head on as it is paying more attention to it. Maybe there\u2019s a reason we invite some people in and not others.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Perhaps I should just take the blame for what happened. I mean, I AM totally awesome. James clearly just couldn\u2019t resist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019ve timed it exactly right so that if I leave my apartment no later&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Wheels on the Bus Go...Oh, Hell No - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Wheels on the Bus Go...Oh, Hell No - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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. 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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\u2019ve timed it exactly right so that if I leave my apartment no later&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2008-12-01T20:31:41+00:00","author":"Emily Herzlin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html","name":"The Wheels on the Bus Go...Oh, Hell No - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-12-01T20:31:41+00:00","dateModified":"2008-12-01T20:31:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/60ceefaf4f60083515d6b0a03fd5e3ef"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/12\/the-wheels-on-the-bus-gooh-hell-no.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Wheels on the Bus Go&#8230;Oh, Hell No"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/60ceefaf4f60083515d6b0a03fd5e3ef","name":"Emily Herzlin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/233\/23312275747e2eadb402e574469b865cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/233\/23312275747e2eadb402e574469b865cx96.jpg","caption":"Emily Herzlin"},"description":"Emily Herzlin graduated New York University with a B.A. in Dramatic Literature and Creative Writing in 2008. She is a freelance writer for the Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s International Perspective, and her writing has been published in Sentient City, the ID Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s online literary magazine. Emily is also a playwright and winner of the Young Playwrights Inc. National Playwrighting Competition for her one-act play \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Assemblage.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Her writing is influenced by art, artists, psychology, and spirituality. She has run drama and arts workshops in schools in NYC and Long Island, and teaches children with autism. Emily is working on her M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University School of the Arts. Emily has been attending classes and workshops at the ID Project since 2005.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/eherzlin"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}