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I am all about public transit. I don't have a car. I take the Metra from Chicago (where I live) to the burbs (where I work). Then I take a bus from the train station to my office, which is in an office park in Lake Forest about 500 yards from the tollway.
I wish that we called office parks 'trading estates' like they do in Britain. It sounds better.
Anyway. You get to know the people on your shuttle bus. The faces get familiar, even if you never put names to them. Everyone has his or her particular seat on the bus and you can see consternation flit across faces if the seat is taken by some newbie or sporadic rider who doesn't know (or ignores) the unwritten code of conduct for the PACE shuttle bus.
Some of the bus people are cool. I, of course, am a cool bus person. We all sit in back together as if we were in junior high and the top clique on campus. And you know the cool bus people's names and even email each other sometimes. Some of the bus people are ciphers--no idea whether they're cool, annoying, outrageous. No names. They just ride the bus. Period. Then there are annoying bus people. Annoying bus people get nicknames to reflect some characterisitic of their annoying-ness.
There are many ways to be an annoying bus person. Like Hat Guy. Hat Guy was annoying for a couple of reasons. He became Hat Guy because he always wore a hat. Not just any hat, mind you, but sort of a cowboy/Crocodile Dundee hat with the under-the-chin thingy. And there was a summer AND a winter version of this hat. The winter version was made out of the usual felt-like stuff. But the summer version was made out of this weird meshy stuff that looked like someone took window screen material and starched the crap out of it.
The biggest reason that Hat Guy became an annoying bus person, though, had to do with his seemingly uncontrollable urge to tell everybody what to do. Hat Guy was a freaking expert on EVERYTHING. He would basically eavesdrop on a conversation and then just bust in with (1) unsolicited advice and (2) his own story about his experience with the exact thing the person was talking about and (3) conclude with more sage advice. And everyone on the bus could hear him because Hat Guy is also a loud talker.
Ok. Hat Guy got a car or something because he's not on the bus anymore. THANK GOD.
He has been replaced, though, by a guy who just started riding the bus a couple weeks ago. The new guy is an annoying bus person. It's a little more complicated because his annoyingness is very quiet so you can ignore it most of the time, but it's got a sinister bent to it, so it's also kind of scary to ignore it because he's creepy and might have laser vision or something.
So this new guy--haven't landed on a nickname yet--he's annoying because (1) he's really quiet, (2) he stares at you (3) he doesn't quite understand personal space and the violation thereof.
He gets right up next to you at the bus stop. RIGHTUPNEXTTOYOU. I mean, this is not New York, ok? This is LAKE FOREST. There is plenty of space, the bus isn't going to leave without you and you are FREAKING ME OUT. Then on the bus, if you're sitting across from him (I would also note that he does not respect the bus code of conduct and often takes a seat that 'belongs' to someone else), he stares at you the whole time. Not like spaced out staring and your head's just in the way, but actual staring right at your face for the entire ride. GOD. It is so freaky.
I mean, what if I moved away or something so he couldn't stare at my face and that turned out to be the thing that pushed him over some edge. Because I'm telling you, people--he is on the edge of something. Wound tight and seems ready to explode. That's part of what makes it creepy. He's really intense. And when I say intense, I do NOT mean the sort of cool, brooding artist intense. I mean fucking-crazy-gonna-kill- you intense.
He wasn't on the bus the other day, and the cool bus people were wondering if there are ways to ban someone from the bus for being creepy annoying.
shiver-shudder
A show of hands please? All in favor of this creepy annoying sinister dude being kicked off the bus? All against?
Cheers-
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