The DMV Passenger Seat

It's been an interest of mine to write a book on the wonders of public transportation in the DC metropolitan area. In fact, I'm sure a thrilling book can be written on this topic in almost any setting, given the right narrative and perspective. DC just happens to be my only home away from home - and as I've recently come to admit, the place with which I can most closely identify.

So in the mean time, I felt the need to scratch my itch by posting this blog.

It must have been back in the spring of 2006, when I first took a Sociology course. A handful of my classmates and I volunteered to help our instructor with a research project he had been tasked with. We were to map Washington, DC metro stations across various social indicators. The shifts in trends as  you go from the North West quadrant to the South East quadrant were drastic (and in some cases negative) even for that time. It's fair to assume it would have been an even steeper gradient pre-gentrification. The pros and cons of the (often forced) migration of District residents is a topic for another conversation - but whatever your stance may be on that subject, you have to admit that having diversity (no matter what indicator you're looking at) makes for an interesting bus/train ride. Of course some indicators are a lot more entertaining than others. In DC at least, I would argue that age and culture are certainly up there.

My mind goes back to a gentleman that a southbound S4 bus picked up from the U street area. He must have been somewhere around 5 5" or 5 6" in height. Unshaved, it was nearly impossible to make out his features hidden behind the long and curly bush of hair that populated his face. It was almost as though his small and bloodshot eyes were peering through an unkempt veil. He sported a colorful t-shirt and shorts, with a matching backpack. I was having trouble reconciling the contradiction between his appearance from the neck up and his appearance from the neck down, when he placed himself next to an expensively dressed woman that must have been well in her 80s. Almost immediately, he very comfortably placed one arm over her shoulder and rested it on the back of her seat - kind of like something out of a disturbing date scene in a romantic comedy. The woman kept her face turned away but would slowly look at the man from the corner of her eye, all the while shifting away from him in her seat. Within 10 minutes she was at the edge of her seat but, he kept leaning in closer. What she couldn't see was that the man had fallen asleep! By the time we got to her destination, he was literally asleep on her shoulder and didn't even wake up when she got up from her seat!

Photo Credit: www.wjla.com

I must say, in my limited experience, there's nothing like a trip on the S4 or the 70 for some entertainment. I was waiting on the 70 in downtown Silver Spring one sunny afternoon, beside an elderly Ethiopian lady dressed in a long colorful dress and "netela" - a traditional shawl. A young woman walked past and did a double-take, stopped dead in her tracks, then looked closer at the Ethiopian lady's dress. "Wow - that's beautiful", she told her. "Eh?", the Ethiopian woman said, scrunching up her face in complete confusion. The young woman stepped closer and repeated herself, "I said, that's a beautiful dress". The Ethiopian lady also leaned in as though it was her ears that were failing her, and not her command of the English language, "Ehhh?". After the young woman paraphrased for the third time, the Ethiopian lady nodded. Once the young woman walked off, the Ethiopian lady turned to me and said, "Mindinew yemitilegn, lidjay?" - which is Amharic for, what is she saying to me, my child? I smiled and explained the young woman's compliment. "Wiy, wiy, wiy, wiy…", she began to say in disappointment, "tenk yew-im salilat?" - which means, I didn't even get to say thank you! except, she actually knew to say the words "thank you" in English.

A few months back, I was on the Purple Charm City Circulator in Baltimore when a young man boarded the bus looking tired and beaten, with clothes that looked like they had been through a shredder. He slowly made his way to the back of the bus, and sang, to date, the most beautiful rendition of Musiq Soulchild's "Teach Me" that I've ever heard. We gave him a standing ovation.

Of course, there are also the less attractive incidents. I believe I was waiting on the 10 (a county bus) in Hilandale, alone - or so I had thought - when I suddenly got a whiff of… well, how do I say this? It was like someone just opened the doors to an overused public bathroom stall. The fumes were coming at me slowly but without mercy. I calmly turned around, terrified of what I may find behind me. A woman was squatting a short distance behind me, staring me dead in the eyes with her chin pressed against her chest. I quickly noticed the trail of urine coming my way from beneath her and stepped out of the line of fire, then turned back around like I didn't see a thing. When my bus came, I jumped on board without ever looking back.

The rude and disrespectful passengers can be just as bad as being stared down by a creepy woman relieving herself… but, as an email forward I received today said, "the pleasure in anything, is the attitude towards it". So I choose to be grateful for the young boys that help carry a stroller onto a bus for a mother they've never met before, the old woman that helped calm someone else's cranky toddler simply by singing to him from where she was sitting, the bus drivers that don't drive off until the elderly passengers have taken their seats, the regular riders that help guide the new bus drivers that are not sure about what route to take, and the millions of people that give up their seat for the comfort of another person.

There's something isolating about personal vehicles. Public transportation, while much less convenient, is always the heart of where a community truly interacts. There's just no other place where you get that physically close with so many members of the community over such an extended length of time.