anywhereisbetter

A lot of people hate public transportation. Whether it’s the crowds, the routes, or the unreliable timing, most people dedicated to a life without automobiles have some complaint about their chosen mode of getting around. My personal complaint? I hate being punched in the head by crazy people.

Now, I’m not exactly known for my fighting ways. As a fairly affable guy who prefers to diffuse volatile situations rather than ignite them, my involvement in physical altercations is generally limited to forceful mediation such as holding someone back, or putting myself between two political opponents arguing outside of a designated “free speech zone.” Despite being surrounded by a fairly rough crowd for a good portion of my life, I’ve done my best to avoid personal involvement in these kinds of situations. As Michael Jackson once said to Paul McCartney, I’m a lover, not a fighter. Of course, that was before Michael Jackson bought all the rights to the entire Beatles catalog. I bet they’d totally fight now.

Anyway.

Given this fact (that I’m a lover, not a fighter, in case you’ve forgotten), you might wonder why anyone would punch me in the head on the bus. A fair question, to be sure. But not unlike the question of why any marketing team at any food company anywhere (except maybe Japan) would decide that Pop Rocks and applesauce make a good combination, some things are simply inexplicable. Maybe it was the way I stood in front of him, yelling “Does this bother you?” over and over while poking him repeatedly in the forehead. Maybe, except that didn’t happen. No, I’m going to have to say that he was just completely nuts.

You know, crazy. As in, a few cards short of a full deck. His elevator didn’t go to the top floor. He was off his rocker, a few Doritos bags short of an IT professional.

The story goes like this: I step onto the bus, en route to my soul-crushing job as a “technical support specialist” at the cable company for a new test product known as “high speed internet.” As usual, I walk to the rear (where I was never cool enough to sit in grade school), and take my pick of empty seats. As I do so, my soon-to-be opponent, a man somewhere in his late forties or early fifties, stares me down in that way that rival gorillas stare at each other before fighting for Alpha Male status. I’m no rival gorilla, so I do my best to ignore him. But Grape Ape keeps it up, not once taking his eye off of me. This goes on for several blocks, until he finally rings the “stop requested” rope. The doors open, and as he walks past, I quietly breathe a sigh of relief.

But a split second later, Mr. Fists darts back up the stairs, getting right in my face.

“You throwin’ something at me, boy?” Clearly I was not. Oh, you mean a look? No, I wasn’t throwing any of those, either. I answer in kind.

“Good,” he says with the kind of machismo usually reserved for frat parties and coed naked lacrosse matches, “thought you made a mistake.”

Feeling the need to respond, I mumble something about how I did not, in fact, make a mistake. My friend the starer found this unacceptable, once again springing to action, this time punching me in the head. Twice. “What’s going on?” I’m thinking to myself, unable to believe the ringing in my head from the blows.

After what felt like a minute of being pummeled (but was in fact only a second or two), I finally react, jumping out of my seat. The crazy man lunges at me. I somehow pull some judo type move on him, sidestepping his attack while throwing him into a seat. As he falls, I punch him repeatedly in the face, angry with him for disturbing my bus ride, and even angrier that I was on my way to work. With each punch, I utter another fragment of the completely reasonable question “what…the fuck…is wrong… with you?”

If you’ve ever been in a situation such as this, you know that it feels like an eternity. Time seems to slow down, as you react to everything going on around you. It’s a surreal experience, because when it’s all over, you realize that what felt like two minutes of mortal combat was really no more than ten or fifteen seconds.

In this particular case, ten seconds was just long enough for the entire bus to turn around in time to see me beating the shit out of some old man. Suddenly, I’m the bad guy. The other passengers looked horrified.

The bus driver, a rather large man who already looked annoyed to be working on such a sunny day, sighed with frustration, slowly stood up, and sauntered toward us. “This is your stop, isn’t it?” It wasn’t, but saying so seemed like a bad idea.

I didn’t make it into work that day, and a few weeks later I found another job. A better job, one with higher pay, better benefits, and more opportunities. But most importantly, it was a job within walking distance.