Bus ride on early mornings ? Could be quite amusing

Oh, well, I am an early person. I love getting up early and go out. Even if I have to go to work, I don’t mind. To reach the Office, I have a few possibilities : the tube, buses or walking.

I stopped taking the tube for three main reasons : claustrophobia, smells & people. First of all, honestly, I am a bit claustrophobic when I take any subway. I nearly have a heart attack and I do panic quite often especially when the tram stops in the middle of tunnels ! It happened to me a few times and I really hated that feeling ; Secondly, I cannot understand how a person can stink at 7 am. Sometimes it is rather disgusting to smell those odors of transpiration, (bad) perfumes and any other aroma. The closer we are to summer season, the more I avoid the tube. Thirdly, I hate crowded places. I don’t feel secured whenever I am in a packed out area. I spent a few years attending to soccer games with about 40,000 persons but I didn’t feel that way. Nowadays, I like being surrounded by a restricted number of people.

About walking, even though I like walking around and have a long walk during holidays, I am not going to sweat before the arrival to the Office and stinking all day long !

That is why I much prefer taking buses. It is not faster than subway, but, apart from some jam-packed lines of buses, you are not going to be dozens in it. For instance, my daily bus capacity is about 25 persons on mornings and not more on evenings. It is a melting pot of persons : workers, retired, pupils, students or, for some reasons unknown, tourists !

Nevertheless, they are regulars on this line : same morning, same hour, same people. It is funny to observe that any morning this lady would come at the same hour, doing the same act before getting on the bus, sitting at the same place without any problem, as all the others do the same thing. I am the wildest person in the bus, I guess. I am changing my habits and my way of sitting in the bus and I noticed that they do remark that : each morning. One of the men is used to look in my direction and whenever I don’t sit in my “supposed” seat, he is quite disrupted.  

Then, another fact is that I am doing a game with a student. Wherever I sit, he tries to be in front of me. He can’t do it sometimes and it is obviously not funny for him. Our game has been lasting for a year and half. We never talked or even greeted. We are just looking alternatively to each other, pretending not to mention the other and, above all, not to notice that we are doing that. I wasn’t aware of that until an elderly lady talked to me a few of months ago. She was at the same bus stopping waiting for our bus to come and she said “Hello”. I replied nicely and she told me without any other introduction “Would your boyfriend be on the bus ?”. I was like “Hello ? my boyfriend doesn’t even know which bus I am taking a ride in !”. 

But she added “Well, not your boyfriend, but your boy-soon-to-be-friend”. As I was a bit perplexed, she explained to me that theory of “our game”. I told her that I never noticed such a diversion and thought that she was imagining that. But the fact is that she was right. As soon as I came on the bus, he looked the opening gate and looked where I was going to sit and then, changed of seat to be in my area. The morning after, I arrived late on purpose to be sure he won’t be able to change seat. But he spent the 20 minutes of ride watching to me through windows reflections

This morning was even more interesting. He stopped in front of me, staring at me during the whole ride and each time I was looking to his direction, he pretended to have a look outside the bus. The elderly lady told me again that he didn’t stop looking to me.

Which is even more surprising is that I can recognize him without having a look. I know his way of walking, his way of behaving when he comes on the bus and even his breath. I don’t need to observe carefully inside the bus I just know whenever he is in or not.

So, the bus ride on mornings is amusing enough. All I know is that he is a student and looks like a sweet boy. He could be my kid. I think that I am entertaining him.

So far, I have nothing else better to do on early morning bus but gaming and listening my MP3 !!