To serve as a warning of sorts, let me say: the title is neither ironic nor facetious. This post is, in fact, about the abandoned wrapper of a maxi-pad. So, while it is not at all about menstruation, it is about something which once covered a piece of menstruation paraphernalia. So, anyway, if you just don't want to read about periods, you're fine to keep reading. But, if my use of the word "menstruation" twice in the sentence above makes you uncomfortable (because of the word, not because of some nit-picky editorial tic regarding repetition) then please don't continue. You're comfort is very important to me! I mean, it's not "very" important to me, but I care. A bit. Anyway, here we go:
It's not a maxi-pad. It's just the wrapper.l Peach. Vinyl. Folded up into itself. Kotex, I'd guess.
The bus starts moving the moment I retrieve my day pass from the fare machine. I clumsily fall into the second seat along the driver's side of the vehicle, and there it is, sitting in the seat directly across from me.
For awhile, until seats in the back open up, I continue riding right across from it. I watch each stop as passengers get on and off the bus, pretending it isn't there. An older man in a KCFD polo wearing glasses with wide, brown plastic frames, sits a seat away. At one point, a younger man with chin length, blondish brownish hair and a purple umbrella he carried like a walking stick, sat directly to its right. For a few stops, a third man sat by it, pretending to read Steinbeck but really just watching out the window. Nobody paid any attention to the folded up bit of pale, orange plastic.
Except me. I was predictably intrigued. This was the most fascinating piece of feminine hygiene product debris I had ever seen. How did it get there? Did it slip out of a woman's pocket? Had she cleaned out her purse and decided to leave it behind? In either situation, why had she kept an empty maxi-pad wrapper instead of disposing of it in a bathroom trash can?
Perhaps she happened across some absurd situation while riding the metro and craftily used the maxi-pad to solve a problem. If so: where was it now? In a shoe serving as a make-shift sole? Taped tightly around the gash on someone's left forearm? Clenched in a toddler's hands with a sharpie-drawn face and body, acting as a doll to temporarily replace the one that remained, sad and abandoned, at the bus stop? Disposed of in a public trash can, drenched in the forehead sweat of an over-heated city dweller?
Or perhaps a frequent rider of the bus system feels unnaturally possessive of the second seat on the right side of the bus and leaves discarded feminine hygiene wrappers on the seat as she exits, hoping to discourage other patrons from claiming the spot. If so, it works. I watch, stop after stop, passengers getting on the ever-filling bus. Each one walks past the seat as though it isn't there. They opt, instead, to sit with strangers, to stand near the back doors gripping onto a pole, to smush themselves in between the man muttering angrily out of the window and the teenager reeking of pot.
I wonder where it's going. It's on a brief furlough from bathroom drawers, the bottoms of handbags, and waste bins. How many routes can it ride before it gets tossed to the floor and trampled out or swept into a garbage bag? In the end, who will dispose of it? And is it enjoying it's tour of the city?
A disembodied voice announces the street names of an upcoming intersection. I look up and yank on the yellow cord that's stretched along the length of the bus. The driver pulls to a stop. The doors open. I exit. And as the bus, and the abandoned maxi-pad wrapper, move further into the distance, my curiosity dissipates.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Public Transportastor: Disaster on the City Bus
Really, this whole mess started way back when Renee was still here. You know Renee? My best friend/love of my life? Cute, funny, energetic? Befriends everyone? Australian? You probably know Renee. When Renee was here, she rode the bus all the time. Which is why, really, all of this is her fault. Back when she was still here, we talked about having a "bus adventure" where we ditched my car and public-transported it all day and to various locations. She was well versed in the bus! She could have taught me her ways! But, unfortunately, we never got around to it. She went back to Australia, and I just kept driving everywhere.
Until Wednesday night when the fire department showed up at my door. I work two jobs. In the mornings, I work at an insurance office. And then, on several evenings, I work at the library. The insurance office is about 25 minutes away from my house when driving; the library is about 25 minutes from my house when walking. So, Wednesday morning I drove to the insurance office, worked, and then returned to my apartment. I had about two-ish hours to kill before I needed to leave for the library. I watched Tuesday night's Pretty Little Liars. I made myself dinner. I touched up my makeup. When I had about fifteen minutes before I was planning on heading out, I was scrolling through tumblr, and my roommate knocked on my door.
"Um, Kat? The Kansas City Fire Department is at the door for you? Something about your car?" He said, kind of quietly and with a hint of confusion in his voice.
"What? Why?" I asked him. He kind of shrugged as we walked to our front door. The night before, a KCFD ambulance and a hoard of police officers were sent to the library because of an altercation in the parking lot. I was trying to fit that into my understanding of what was happening when I opened the door to a tall, black, thirty-plus year old fireman whose forehead was glistening with the sort of sweat that comes from layering up in fire protective gear, driving around in 100-degree weather, and then getting up-close-and-personal with some flames.
He explained to me that my engine caught on fire. He said it was probably electrical because it started just above the battery. He asked what year my car was (2000) and told me that, because it was older than ten, he didn't have to call the fire inspector.
I called my dad and cried. The engine was gone. Gone-gone. There was a gross burn-blemish on the hood of my beautiful, beautiful car. I don't have the money for car repairs. I don't have the money for buying a new car. I don't have the money for buying an old car. I cried so much on the phone that my dad had to say, "I can't understand you. Do you just want to call me back when you calm down?"
"No. I'm calm." I told him, firmly, quickly flipping off my hysteria.
I called into the library. "Hey, so, my engine caught on fire." "Oh my gosh!" "I think I'm the only page on duty today, so, if you need me to come in, I can have my roommate drive me, but..." "No, that's fine, take care of whatever you need to take care of."
My dad came over. He looked at the car. We decided she was a goner. It was sad.
That night, I looked up the bus route and wrote down instructions of how to get to the insurance office the next morning, and how to get back.
Thursday, at way-too-early, I woke up, got ready, and walked to the bus stop. I spent the fifty minute bus ride worrying. Am I sitting in the right place? What do I do when I need to get off? What if I'm so distracted worrying that I miss my stop and... and then we were at my first stop. At this point, I was supposed to get on another bus, but I couldn't quite figure out where the other bus was supposed to pick me up. So I just walked the rest of the way to work. I got there just barely on time and sweaty but I got there.
The ride home was a little bit better. I found my first stop. I found my second stop. I got on and off the right buses and at the right time. On Friday, I made my first mistake by assuming that I had figured out what I was doing this time around. I made my second mistake by finding the right bus stop during the bus transfer and feeling like I was in the clear. I made my third mistake by totally missing my stop, and then another by not realizing I had missed my stop, and then another by realizing I had missed by stop but hoping that they would loop back around somewhere near where I could get to work.
Eventually, I texted my father. Frantically. "I MISSED MY STOP! I DON'T KNOW WHERE WE ARE!!!!!!" And he looked up the route online and said, "I think at the 31st transit the bus will be looping back around." I looked at a map. That seemed right-ish. I called into work, "Hey, I've been having vehicular issues and am on the bus but missed my stop and so I'm going to have to ride the route through, I'm going to be late, but probably not too late because I think the route's about to turn back that direction."
I was attentive this time. But before I knew it, we were deep into the city. I texted my father again: "Here's where we are, did I somehow miss the stop again?" He texted me back, "That's not on the route you gave me?" That's when I realized: there were two maps. At the transit, the bus didn't turn back on the route. It became an entirely new route.
Luckily, sitting right next to me were guys in their mid-twenties. Both were lean and dapper. One wore slacks, a tie, a pair of glasses. The other had a large backpack, long hair pulled up, two curls that fell down and framed his face. Glasses was telling Backpack about the bus line we were on--where the bus was going, where Backpack should get off to catch his bus to Dallas, where he worked, how often he rode the bus, that sort of thing. Backpack stood, they bid one another farewell, and then Backpack got off the bus and headed towards Dallas. Presumably. So I turned to Glasses.
"Hey, you seem to know a lot about this route."
"Yeah."
"Okay, maybe you can help me. Right now this is route 12?"
"Yeah."
"When I got on it was route 35. Will it become route 35 again?"
"Yeah, I know this bus does turn to 35 at some point."
"Do you know when?"
"I've never ridden it that far." He looks at the brochures I'm holding and adds, "It looks like the 31st transit."
"Okay, thanks."
The bus pulled to a stop. Glasses got off. I texted my father and explained the situation. At some point, I meandered up to the bus driver and asked when the bus would become 35 again. He repeated, "The 31st transit." I asked how far that was. He said it would be soon.
I called into work. I was going to be much later than I had anticipated when I called the first time. And, since I had to leave at 12:30 on the dot for my cousin's wedding, I wasn't sure if they wanted me to come in at all. My supervisor said it was fine. Since she was also incredibly nice about it, I relaxed immediately.
My dad said he would pick me up at the stop that I boarded from. So, I was just going to ride it out. All the way through. It would be another hour or so, and I thought the biggest issue was the fact that I'd been on that bus for an hour and half at that point, and I'd needed to pee since boarding.
Little. Did. I. Know.
Public transportation is filled with interesting characters. But, for the bulk of my ride, those interesting characters were like, a jovial painter carrying a bucket full of supplies and a charismatic waiter, the pair of whom spent thirty minutes talking about Miami. Or an older woman with short gray hair and fuchsia lipstick and a wide-eyed man in gray sweat pants, the pair of whom spent fifteen minutes talking about the certifiably-crazy people they regularly saw on the bus. Or an eight year old girl carrying a half-full half-gallon of Vitamin D milk. I felt like most of the "interesting characters" I saw on the bus were the sort of characters you would find in a quirky independent film or stage comedy.
But on the last stage of my journey, I encountered the frightening type of interesting characters you can find on the bus. The first was an older man, scruffy, with dirty pants, who was carrying a blanket a flip phone. From the time route 12 turned back to route 35 until the very last stop before the bus driver's break/layover, this guy sat in front of me and stared, unapologetically, at my kneecaps, then my chest, then my face, then away like he hadn't been staring at me at all. Then again, at my kneecaps, then my chest, then my face, then away. Kneecaps, chest, face, away, kneecaps, chest, face, away. It was unsettling. To give him the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that he was staring at me without any ill-intent. Like, he wasn't staring at me, but that he was just staring in general. But still, I was deeply, deeply uncomfortable. So when the bus driver stopped at the last stop, and the man got off the bus, I stayed on. During his layover/break, the bus driver kindly let me off the bus, despite the fact that it wasn't technically a bus stop.
I also got threatened. On the bus. My second day taking the bus. It was a woman in her late 20's or early 30's. Earlier during the trip, she ranted at a man about the headphones he was listening to. That, in conjunction with her threat to me, made me think that she just perceived the world as harsher and more judgmental than it is. While she got off the bus, she walked up and down the aisle a couple of times, mumbling at me. "Huh?" I asked, quietly. She kept mumbling, but I heard two of her sentences clearly. The were: "I'm going to remember your face. Next time I see you, I'm going to f--k up your face." She repeated it a few times. "I'm going to remember your face. Next time I see you, I'm going to f--k up your face. I'm going to remember your face." She literally did the thing where she pointed her pointer finger and middle finger at her eyes and then at mine a few times.
I didn't respond. I wasn't really scared because it was the middle of the day and we were on a crowded bus. I kind of looked around. There was a girl sitting catty-corner from me who made eye contact with me briefly. Her brows were pulled together and her lips pulled together. Her expression matched my own. I could hear almost hear her thoughts echoing in my mind: "What the heck is this girl going on about?" Then, catty-corner girl looked away. Maybe she thought if the other girl caught her, confusion-sympathizing with me, she would remember both our faces and then the next time she saw us she would f--k up both our faces. I looked at my kneecaps.
I could still here the other girl, stepping off the bus, saying, "I'm going to remember your face" and mumbling.
The whole thing ended at not-a-real-bus-stop. I chatted with the bus driver briefly, and he let me off of the bus, and I thanked him sincerely. Then, I walked over to the bus stop where I was supposed to meet my father. He wasn't there. I texted him frantically, "At the plaza. Are you here? I have to pee! Running into Zoe's Kitchen!" I didn't run into Zoe's Kitchen. They were closed. "Never mind. Closed. Looking for a bathroom!" I started to jog down one road, but I saw the man who spent the bulk of the bus ride staring at me, so I jogged back the other way. I kept looking. "Barnes & Noble! I'm going to Barnes & Noble! Let me know when you're here!"
When I came out of the bathroom, and walked back downstairs, my father was there. And since he was there, it was all over. The whole terrible affair. The three hours on the bus, the old man's stares, the woman's threats. It's almost magic: the way bad things don't feel bad once everything is okay again.
But, that having been said, from now on, I'm going to get off at the right stop. I just don't want to chance running into that girl again. I mean, what if she does remember my face!?
Until Wednesday night when the fire department showed up at my door. I work two jobs. In the mornings, I work at an insurance office. And then, on several evenings, I work at the library. The insurance office is about 25 minutes away from my house when driving; the library is about 25 minutes from my house when walking. So, Wednesday morning I drove to the insurance office, worked, and then returned to my apartment. I had about two-ish hours to kill before I needed to leave for the library. I watched Tuesday night's Pretty Little Liars. I made myself dinner. I touched up my makeup. When I had about fifteen minutes before I was planning on heading out, I was scrolling through tumblr, and my roommate knocked on my door.
"Um, Kat? The Kansas City Fire Department is at the door for you? Something about your car?" He said, kind of quietly and with a hint of confusion in his voice.
"What? Why?" I asked him. He kind of shrugged as we walked to our front door. The night before, a KCFD ambulance and a hoard of police officers were sent to the library because of an altercation in the parking lot. I was trying to fit that into my understanding of what was happening when I opened the door to a tall, black, thirty-plus year old fireman whose forehead was glistening with the sort of sweat that comes from layering up in fire protective gear, driving around in 100-degree weather, and then getting up-close-and-personal with some flames.
He explained to me that my engine caught on fire. He said it was probably electrical because it started just above the battery. He asked what year my car was (2000) and told me that, because it was older than ten, he didn't have to call the fire inspector.
I called my dad and cried. The engine was gone. Gone-gone. There was a gross burn-blemish on the hood of my beautiful, beautiful car. I don't have the money for car repairs. I don't have the money for buying a new car. I don't have the money for buying an old car. I cried so much on the phone that my dad had to say, "I can't understand you. Do you just want to call me back when you calm down?"
"No. I'm calm." I told him, firmly, quickly flipping off my hysteria.
I called into the library. "Hey, so, my engine caught on fire." "Oh my gosh!" "I think I'm the only page on duty today, so, if you need me to come in, I can have my roommate drive me, but..." "No, that's fine, take care of whatever you need to take care of."
My dad came over. He looked at the car. We decided she was a goner. It was sad.
That night, I looked up the bus route and wrote down instructions of how to get to the insurance office the next morning, and how to get back.
Thursday, at way-too-early, I woke up, got ready, and walked to the bus stop. I spent the fifty minute bus ride worrying. Am I sitting in the right place? What do I do when I need to get off? What if I'm so distracted worrying that I miss my stop and... and then we were at my first stop. At this point, I was supposed to get on another bus, but I couldn't quite figure out where the other bus was supposed to pick me up. So I just walked the rest of the way to work. I got there just barely on time and sweaty but I got there.
The ride home was a little bit better. I found my first stop. I found my second stop. I got on and off the right buses and at the right time. On Friday, I made my first mistake by assuming that I had figured out what I was doing this time around. I made my second mistake by finding the right bus stop during the bus transfer and feeling like I was in the clear. I made my third mistake by totally missing my stop, and then another by not realizing I had missed my stop, and then another by realizing I had missed by stop but hoping that they would loop back around somewhere near where I could get to work.
Eventually, I texted my father. Frantically. "I MISSED MY STOP! I DON'T KNOW WHERE WE ARE!!!!!!" And he looked up the route online and said, "I think at the 31st transit the bus will be looping back around." I looked at a map. That seemed right-ish. I called into work, "Hey, I've been having vehicular issues and am on the bus but missed my stop and so I'm going to have to ride the route through, I'm going to be late, but probably not too late because I think the route's about to turn back that direction."
I was attentive this time. But before I knew it, we were deep into the city. I texted my father again: "Here's where we are, did I somehow miss the stop again?" He texted me back, "That's not on the route you gave me?" That's when I realized: there were two maps. At the transit, the bus didn't turn back on the route. It became an entirely new route.
Luckily, sitting right next to me were guys in their mid-twenties. Both were lean and dapper. One wore slacks, a tie, a pair of glasses. The other had a large backpack, long hair pulled up, two curls that fell down and framed his face. Glasses was telling Backpack about the bus line we were on--where the bus was going, where Backpack should get off to catch his bus to Dallas, where he worked, how often he rode the bus, that sort of thing. Backpack stood, they bid one another farewell, and then Backpack got off the bus and headed towards Dallas. Presumably. So I turned to Glasses.
"Hey, you seem to know a lot about this route."
"Yeah."
"Okay, maybe you can help me. Right now this is route 12?"
"Yeah."
"When I got on it was route 35. Will it become route 35 again?"
"Yeah, I know this bus does turn to 35 at some point."
"Do you know when?"
"I've never ridden it that far." He looks at the brochures I'm holding and adds, "It looks like the 31st transit."
"Okay, thanks."
The bus pulled to a stop. Glasses got off. I texted my father and explained the situation. At some point, I meandered up to the bus driver and asked when the bus would become 35 again. He repeated, "The 31st transit." I asked how far that was. He said it would be soon.
I called into work. I was going to be much later than I had anticipated when I called the first time. And, since I had to leave at 12:30 on the dot for my cousin's wedding, I wasn't sure if they wanted me to come in at all. My supervisor said it was fine. Since she was also incredibly nice about it, I relaxed immediately.
My dad said he would pick me up at the stop that I boarded from. So, I was just going to ride it out. All the way through. It would be another hour or so, and I thought the biggest issue was the fact that I'd been on that bus for an hour and half at that point, and I'd needed to pee since boarding.
Little. Did. I. Know.
Public transportation is filled with interesting characters. But, for the bulk of my ride, those interesting characters were like, a jovial painter carrying a bucket full of supplies and a charismatic waiter, the pair of whom spent thirty minutes talking about Miami. Or an older woman with short gray hair and fuchsia lipstick and a wide-eyed man in gray sweat pants, the pair of whom spent fifteen minutes talking about the certifiably-crazy people they regularly saw on the bus. Or an eight year old girl carrying a half-full half-gallon of Vitamin D milk. I felt like most of the "interesting characters" I saw on the bus were the sort of characters you would find in a quirky independent film or stage comedy.
But on the last stage of my journey, I encountered the frightening type of interesting characters you can find on the bus. The first was an older man, scruffy, with dirty pants, who was carrying a blanket a flip phone. From the time route 12 turned back to route 35 until the very last stop before the bus driver's break/layover, this guy sat in front of me and stared, unapologetically, at my kneecaps, then my chest, then my face, then away like he hadn't been staring at me at all. Then again, at my kneecaps, then my chest, then my face, then away. Kneecaps, chest, face, away, kneecaps, chest, face, away. It was unsettling. To give him the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that he was staring at me without any ill-intent. Like, he wasn't staring at me, but that he was just staring in general. But still, I was deeply, deeply uncomfortable. So when the bus driver stopped at the last stop, and the man got off the bus, I stayed on. During his layover/break, the bus driver kindly let me off the bus, despite the fact that it wasn't technically a bus stop.
I also got threatened. On the bus. My second day taking the bus. It was a woman in her late 20's or early 30's. Earlier during the trip, she ranted at a man about the headphones he was listening to. That, in conjunction with her threat to me, made me think that she just perceived the world as harsher and more judgmental than it is. While she got off the bus, she walked up and down the aisle a couple of times, mumbling at me. "Huh?" I asked, quietly. She kept mumbling, but I heard two of her sentences clearly. The were: "I'm going to remember your face. Next time I see you, I'm going to f--k up your face." She repeated it a few times. "I'm going to remember your face. Next time I see you, I'm going to f--k up your face. I'm going to remember your face." She literally did the thing where she pointed her pointer finger and middle finger at her eyes and then at mine a few times.
I didn't respond. I wasn't really scared because it was the middle of the day and we were on a crowded bus. I kind of looked around. There was a girl sitting catty-corner from me who made eye contact with me briefly. Her brows were pulled together and her lips pulled together. Her expression matched my own. I could hear almost hear her thoughts echoing in my mind: "What the heck is this girl going on about?" Then, catty-corner girl looked away. Maybe she thought if the other girl caught her, confusion-sympathizing with me, she would remember both our faces and then the next time she saw us she would f--k up both our faces. I looked at my kneecaps.
I could still here the other girl, stepping off the bus, saying, "I'm going to remember your face" and mumbling.
The whole thing ended at not-a-real-bus-stop. I chatted with the bus driver briefly, and he let me off of the bus, and I thanked him sincerely. Then, I walked over to the bus stop where I was supposed to meet my father. He wasn't there. I texted him frantically, "At the plaza. Are you here? I have to pee! Running into Zoe's Kitchen!" I didn't run into Zoe's Kitchen. They were closed. "Never mind. Closed. Looking for a bathroom!" I started to jog down one road, but I saw the man who spent the bulk of the bus ride staring at me, so I jogged back the other way. I kept looking. "Barnes & Noble! I'm going to Barnes & Noble! Let me know when you're here!"
When I came out of the bathroom, and walked back downstairs, my father was there. And since he was there, it was all over. The whole terrible affair. The three hours on the bus, the old man's stares, the woman's threats. It's almost magic: the way bad things don't feel bad once everything is okay again.
But, that having been said, from now on, I'm going to get off at the right stop. I just don't want to chance running into that girl again. I mean, what if she does remember my face!?
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