I hate people

Sometimes, living in a big city, and especially taking public transportation, can lead to utter contempt for the human race. Just about every little thing people do irritates me. Wearing a backpack while standing on the bus. Placing your backpack on the seat next to you while the bus is packed and then sighing loudly when asked to move it. Hugging the pole rather than placing one hand on it while standing. Refusing to walk toward the back of the bus so more people can get on. And, in general, just being alive.

Although these people annoy me greatly, I never go out of my way to scold them for their behavior. Dealing with other people and their obnoxious quirks is part of the price you pay to live in a metropolitan area. You get to live in a culturally rich, vibrant, amazing city. As a consequence, you have to deal with idiots, tourists and the morbidly obese. And you take their faults and keep your mouth shut because it’s all a part of living in a civil society.

I have witnessed, however, people who haven’t grasped the concept of civil behavior, who don’t realize that because it’s “public” transportation, anyone and everyone who pays fare is free to take the bus or train.

For example, the bus I take everyday is an express from Michigan Avenue to the Lakeview neighborhood, which is mostly comprised of young professionals. As a result, we rarely see children on our bus. So, when three British women and their SIX children, all under the age of five, took over our bus one day, we were all a little perturbed. These kids were hellacious. They spent the entire ride kicking and screaming and whining and crying and running around and pretty much making everyone else on the bus miserable. But like I said before, it’s PUBLIC transportation, not only-18-to-35-
year-old-professionals-with-no-children-and-enough-disposable-
income-to-spend-insane-amounts-of-money-on-Marc-Jacobs transportation. Therefore, you take the minor inconvenience of uncontrollable toddlers on your bus, and you forget about it.

What you don’t do is what this incredibly rude 30-something guy did. Right before getting off the bus at his stop, he turned to these moms and said in the bitchiest voice I’ve ever heard, “You need to take some parenting classes,” then snapped his head, threw his nose in the air and walked off.

I felt so bad for these women. They were strangers in our city and our country, they were here visiting and probably just trying to figure out how to navigate Chicago’s incredibly confusing bus system, and in return, some jerk yells at them for procreating and having the audacity to bring their offspring on the bus. Way to make our city look good, dumb ass.

Anyway, why do I bring this up today? Well this morning, I was on the receiving end of some idiot’s totally uncivil behavior.

While on the bus this morning, I happened to be standing in front of two people who were chatting up a storm. Generally, people do not speak on the bus, especially in the morning. There’s this unwritten rule that during the morning commute, you’re supposed to sit quietly and either listen to your iPod or read the newspaper or a book. You don’t talk. So, when I found myself standing opposite two talkers, I automatically pulled out my iPod so I wouldn’t have to listen to their conversation about a dog in a wheelchair. (Seriously, that’s what they were talking about. Apparently the dog had a stroke...) Anyway, I pulled out my iPod and plugged in. And as soon as I did, a woman sitting RIGHT NEXT to the people talking tapped my hand and said, “I can hear your music. You need to turn it down.”

I was dumbfounded. For starters, you can ALWAYS hear people’s music through their earphones. I have yet to be in the general vicinity of someone listening to an iPod and not been able to hear their music, unless I myself was also plugged in. But the reason this woman’s comment caught me so off guard was that she was sitting next to the people yapping away on the bus. How on earth could my music be more disruptive than two people using outside voices on an otherwise-silent bus? And more importantly, didn’t she realize she was breaking the golden rule that, in order to maintain civil society and avert potential conflict, you NEVER tell complete strangers what to do?

I thought about telling her this in response. I also thought about saying back to her, “Yeah, well I can hear your ass growing.” Then I thought about breaking into tears, and in my best Marlee Matlin impression, sobbing, “I’m hard of hearing and this is the only way I can experience music! You make me ashamed to be me!”

But instead, I glared at her for a moment, then turned down my music so I could no longer hear it above the still-ongoing conversation about the wheelchair-bound dog, who had a stroke, and just recently, had to have hip surgery.

And for the briefest of moments, the thought of moving out the suburbs, buying a gas-guzzling SUV and joining the millions of other drivers who clog up the Eisenhower everyday, but get to do it alone and listen to music at any volume and have an hour every morning that doesn’t require interacting with another human being, seemed mildly attractive. But just then my bus crossed the river and started to approach Michigan Avenue and the Wrigley Building, and I remembered why I live here and why I put up with the idiots and the tourists and the stupid people on the bus with their stupid ugly faces.