Scared shitless on SEPTA

Today, I get on the 5 at Frankford Terminal, to go to work. My first time on a bus, which always makes me nervous-- will I miss the stop? Homeless man gets on. Stinks up the bus, and everyone grumbles and moves to the front.

I'm so angry and pissed. It's hot, it smells like shit, and what if I go to work and I smell? Will it cling to me? I start comparing my old bus route, how the people who take the 8 seem kinder and more educated and better people than the people on the 5. I hate this bus route, I decide. I hate everyone here and I hate the neighborhood we're going through, one where everyone through the window--man, woman, potted plant-- looks like a potential criminal.

So this one boy starts being an ass and keeps talking about how the bus driver farted this morning, the bus driver farted and that's why the bus is so stinky. Blah blah blah.

I'm just watching him, like, what the hell is wrong with you? Shut up! He was talking for like 15 minutes. Then this middle-aged guy with a rumpled paper bag on his lap leans forward and touches his shoulder to reprimands him.

I blank out at this point, but the next time I wander back into the conversation, a Hispanic man with a pot-belly and an older Hispanic woman (possibly rude boy's mother?)in the front are suddenly engaged in the conversation with the first guy, a black man.

She accuses him of being racist.

"Sweetheart, I'm black," he declares.

"I don't give a fuck, sweetheart," she says.

They exchange some more words. The bus is mostly Hispanic with some blacks. The Hispanic man with pot-belly stands up and turns around to face the black man. By now more than one person is yelling. Adults are getting involved.

I'm getting scared, because I think it'll come to fists. It's noisy. The bus driver hasn't stopped the bus yet.

Then the black man puts his hand in his rumpled paper bag still on his lap. And I must have seen too many movies, because suddenly I think, Why did he just do that?! And I imagine everyone else is thinking that too.

Next thing I know, people are screaming at him and he's yelling back, "Don't fuck with me! Don't fuck with me!", now frantically searching in his bag. He's looking, rummaging with his hand in this weird frenzied urgency; it isn't like he suddenly realizes how much he wants to chew his Trident gum, it's like he wants to pull out his Uzi and kill everyone and he's getting pissed because he can't find it and every second is one less person dead.

Someone says, "There's kids on this bus!" and I remember the kids, and I remember the kids are behind me, on the other side of the back door, behind the plastic partition, and I think 1) I'll put some plastic between me and gun-crazy man, who's a seat or two down across the aisle from me and 2) He's crazy but he probably won't shoot in the general direction of the kids. So I grab my bag and jump to the back. By this point, I can't even smell homeless guy who started all this.

(I'm thinking: He may not have a gun. He may actually have a gun. He may actually have a gun and may actually fire it, and why the fuck would he carry around a paper bag anyway? Fuck fuck. Is he going to shoot the people he's arguing with? What then, will he shoot everyone else? I'm trying to remember how many guns the Inquirer said were on the street. I'm picturing the SEPTA bus splattering like a tomato. I hate this bus route. This would never have happened on the 8. )

The bus has stopped. The driver is getting involved, trying to calm everyone down and make everyone sit in their fucking seats, threatening to call the cops, and now I really want to get off this bus, really badly. Except now I'm not sure the driver can run to the front and open the doors in time to save my face.

Then this lady grabs her teenage son and shrieks repeatedly at the driver to open the back doors, until he strides back to the front to comply. When they get off, I get off with them.

"I'm not staying on a bus with a gun," she rants outside. "I wasn't going to fucking stay on that bus."