On the bus home, sitting between two people with small bottoms, I recalled my angry message from this morning. You know, the one about the man with the big ass. I thought as I dozed and jostled home, it’s not nice to tar all big bottomed people with a brush of any kind. I thought, I don’t care how big his ass is. So why did I feel the need to denigrate him with a comment about his size? What’s the real reason that man pissed me off After all, I sit next to all kinds of people on the bus. Big, small, smelly, stupid, very occasionally super-hot.
The part that bothered me about this man was that he was in my space. Partly that was unavoidable: we were crammed tight and bus seats are not built for big bottomed people. That part didn’t bother me. But when all the seats next to him opened up and he didn’t do the courteous thing, which to me, is to move away from the person with whom you are sharing intimate thigh moments, then I got uncomfortable.
The unwritten law of transit, to my mind, is make yourself as small as possible. Turn sideways when you walk down the isles. Keep your knees together. Keep your purse on the floor between your legs. If you are wearing your backpack, you are taking up the space of two people. (Yes, my belly takes up the space of an extra person. That’s because it is one.) When people disobey these laws, they annoy me because I follow them and that’s not (foot stomp!) fair!
Lately, though, I’ve made a new rule for myself and I try to be understanding of other people that I think might be following this rule as well. That rule is: I will accomodate as many other people as I can on this bus/train but not at the expense of my own reasonable comfort. So, yes, I will move as far back on the train as I can to make room for all of you people slavering at the doors. But I will not balance on one leg for 30 minutes, dangling my body over some guy’s briefcase, getting a terrible cramp in my ass, just so one more person can get on. I need to have both my feet on the floor, a pole to hang onto and enough space around me that I am not crushed in any way. I do not pay my transit fare every day to suffer. I do not have the balance or mobility to surf the light rail fantastic anymore.
With 8 feet of space to his right, Mr. Lean-To chose to stay wedged up close to me. Maybe that’s because I’m very beautiful.(cough) Or perhaps I smell sweet like a spring’s day. (sputter) Maybe he was thinking about something else and had become used to the weight of my body against him. Anything is possible but it was cruel of me to go with the cheap shot and insult his bottom. Sorry, Mr. Lean-To. You go rock on with your bad bottom. And next time I’ll just get up and move.
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