Busling and I board with a middle-aged man who had pulled his mask onto his chin to smoke a cigarette at the stop. He does not replace the mask as he enters the bus, nor after he is settled into his seat in the front section, directly behind the driver.
The driver, like most of the drivers we ride with in the Covid era (and very unlike the 27 driver from my previous post), lets it slide. He activates the automated announcement about masks—“Federal law requires that all passengers…”—and keeps driving.
The man, oblivious to the announcement, scrolls through his phone.
Another, younger man, whose seat is facing the maskless passenger, speaks up.
“Hey! Hey man! Ain’t you supposed to have your mask on?”
The maskless man looks up from his phone, takes a moment to register the comment.
Then he says, “Thank you,” and pulls his mask over his face.
Late last month, at around 4-ish on a Wednesday afternoon, Chicklet and I found ourselves on a 27 heading home from downtown. Seats were scarce when we boarded, but we found two together in the back row—a safe distance from other passengers—and spent the ride discussing my longtime riding partner‘s expectations and hopes for her final year of middle school (!!!).
When we arrived at 23rd and Yesler, per usual, the bus cleared out, leaving only Chicklet and me, who planned to exit at the next stop, and a young white woman, who was engrossed in her laptop at the other end of the back row.
After the mass exodus, a sixty-ish Black woman boarded, carrying a shopping bag in each hand. She was wearing a teal, v-neck halter top; fitted floral pants; and a black, bobbed wig. As she stepped aboard, she nodded to the driver and, in a melodious voice tinged with an accent I couldn’t place, and said matter-of-factly, “I don’t have a card.”
She looked fabulous—attractive, stylish, and somehow simultaneously seasoned and youthful—so I watched her walk all the way to her seat.
It wasn’t until she was settled—in a window seat on the right side of the bus, about midway down the aisle—that I noticed she wasn’t wearing a mask. The driver, a stocky white man in his mid to late thirties, apparently noticed too. His voice, muffled by his own mask, drifted toward the back of the bus.
“Excuse me. Excuse me, ma’am?”
The woman did not reply or indicate that she had heard him.
With the bus still parked at the stop, the driver shifted in his seat and turned his body in the direction of the woman. He got louder—“EXCUSE ME???”—then started rapping his knuckles on the plexiglass (Covid) safety barrier that separated his seat from the rest of the bus.
Still, there was no response.
Assuming that the woman wasn’t aware that the driver was talking to her, and anxious to get moving, I hustled down the aisle to her seat. She had her phone to her ear but was staring straight ahead and not actually talking. I leaned toward her and said, “I think he’s trying to get your attention.”
She did not turn her head or even move her eyes in my direction. I repeated myself and waited for a few more seconds, then eventually returned to Chicklet, who was widening her eyes and cocking her head in the universal gesture for “WTF?”
The driver continued to call to the woman, banging on the plexiglass barrier, then eventually standing up. She continued to sit serenely, almost frozen in place, with her phone to her ear.
Finally, the driver slipped past the barrier, grabbed a mask from the dispenser, and waved it in front of her.
“Hellloooooo?” he said, his tone reflecting his now high level of exasperation. “Can you put one of these on?
She said, “No.”
The driver paused for a beat, then blurted out something about masks being required on the bus.
The woman said, “You’re being violent with me.”
The driver tried to justify his behavior, saying he’d raised his voice because he wasn’t sure she’d heard him.
The woman remained silent.
“Well, we’re not going anywhere until you put this on,” he said, dropping the mask on the seat in front of her.
She said, “That’s fine.”
The driver returned to his seat. After a moment, he turned off the bus and opened the doors, then stepped outside to make a call. He explained to the person on the other end—his shift coordinator? the transit police?—that he had a passenger who was refusing to wear a mask and that he wasn’t going to leave the stop until she did.
While he was talking, the woman pulled out a book.
After the driver finished his call, he returned to the woman’s seat and told her that someone was coming to escort her off the bus if she didn’t put on a mask.
“It’s your choice,” he said.
She said, for the second time, “That’s fine,” and continued to calmly read her book.
I could feel the tension rising in my body as I anticipated the inevitable confrontation. We could have easily walked home from the stop where the bus was parked, but I knew I had to stay put, if only as a witness to whatever happened next.
The woman’s extreme calm intrigued me. Was she as unbothered as she seemed? Was she terrified but determined to stand her ground? And why wouldn’t she put on a mask?
Part of me was pissed at her. From my perception of the interaction, she was being ridiculous and unreasonable, not to mention selfish. As the mama of an unvaccinated 11-year old who has been hospitalized twice with asthma exacerbations, I don’t have patience for people who believe that their personal preferences are more important that the lives and health of the people they share the world with.
But part of me felt protective. I thought of the many reasons (historical and otherwise) she was justified to insist on being treated with dignity. And I knew for sure that I didn’t want to see her manhandled or forcibly removed from the bus.
As we waited, the three of us in the back row whispered to each other, wondering what would happen, sympathizing with bus drivers and everyone else tasked with enforcing mask mandates.
Within a couple of minutes, the driver returned to the woman’s seat.
“Can I ask you something? Why won’t you wear a mask?” His tone was curious, even conciliatory.
Hers was as firm and resolved as ever. “I’m not going to discuss it with you.”
I often say that drivers need extra emotional and spiritual support to do their jobs well. Of course this is true. But they also need emotional and spiritual support to cope with the impossible situations that prevent them from doing their jobs well. Because really, what was this driver supposed to do?
What he did was turn to the three of us in the back, arms raised in helplessness and frustration.
“Sorry, guys,” he said.
Then he stepped outside again to wait.
Chicklet announced that she had to go to the bathroom. I asked if she could hold it (hilarious, coming from someone whose life revolves around restroom access). She rolled her eyes.
“Mom, how long are we going to sit here?”
As it turned out, not long. Moments after her question, the driver abruptly returned to his seat, sighed loudly, started up the bus, sighed again, and pulled away from the stop. Chicklet pulled the bell, and four blocks later, we stepped away from the whatever the hell had just happened.
As we walked the rest of the way home, I wondered—for perhaps the millionth time—how we can share space with other humans in a way that holds people accountable and honors their dignity? How can we be together in a way that keeps everyone safe? I used to think that, in order to justify my love of the bus, in order to justify my ramblings on this blog, I needed to have an answer to that question. The truth is, after all these years of riding, I have no effing idea.
All I have is hope. Not the kind that overlooks challenges, but the kind born of discipline and a determination to continue to practice being in community, even—especially—when the urge to turn away is strong. Because if we don’t keep trying, our only purpose is to survive our time here. I want more.
“Hope is a discipline.” – Monica Trinidad
And so I lift up that bus driver, that he might know the inherent dignity and beauty in his work. May he understand that he did the best he could under the circumstances, and that sometimes there is no good response to an impossible situation. May this experience deepen his compassion and empathy—for himself, and for his most challenging passengers. May he find the vision and grace to imagine a different response to the impossible situations he encounters in the future.
I lift up that determined woman. May she continue to prioritize her dignity, which she maintained throughout a very tense, public interaction. May this experience encourage her to consider the dignity and well-being of others in her future actions. May she come to understand that her preferences don’t supersede others’ right to live. May she heal from those times when people have treated her in a less-than-dignified manner, and may she be treated with dignity in all her future encounters.
Last Saturday, after a day spent with family, the Bus Fam found ourselves on a late-night 4 ride. I was exhausted and anxious to get the kids home ASAP, so I was grateful that the handful of other passengers on the bus were quietly minding their business.
At 17th, the driver stopped, rather abruptly, several feet beyond the bus stop sign. Through the window, I saw an older woman, somewhere between 55 and 70, hurrying from the area where she had been waiting to the front door of the bus. On the way, she paused and bent to pick up something from the ground.
When the woman finally boarded, she glared at the driver and said, “You knocked my phone out of my hand.”
This was a curious statement. It’s possible that she didn’t have a tight grip on the phone, and the air current from the bus caused her to drop it. But certainly, it is unlikely that the driver had done anything to cause this woman to drop her phone.
I assumed that he would either ignore her accusation or apologize and keep it moving. Instead, he responded, immediately and aggressively.
“No, I didn’t!”
“Yes,” she said, louder this time, “you did.”
The driver pulled away from the stop.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
They went back and forth like this, voices escalating, while the woman held tightly to the pole diagonal to the driver’s seat, and the bus careened down Jefferson.
At 18th, the driver stopped at a red light.
“You need to sit down!” he shouted. “You’re crazy! SIT DOWN.”
By this time, it was clear that the woman was struggling to maintain her balance. Her back was hunched significantly, either from pain or a more permanent condition.
“You need to sit down,” he repeated.
She responded, quietly this time, “Now that you stopped, I can.”
The woman turned, with effort, and sat down in the reserved section. Then, she began making the kinds of sounds someone makes when they are in pain: whimpers, moans, yelps, gasps.
I noticed that she held a bunched up hospital gown in her lap. I remembered that she had boarded in front of Swedish. And I wondered.
I wondered what it must feel like to be released from the hospital after 10 p.m. on Saturday night. To be expected to make it to the bus stop under your own power. To have no one to wheel you or hold your arm or wait with you or just be happy that you’re out. To be suffering mightily, maybe because the painkillers they gave you (if they gave you any) are wearing off. To be barely holding it together while you wait for the bus in the dark, and then to have that bus pass you as you stand there—alone—at the stop. To drop your phone as you hurry to catch it, terrified that it will pass the stop altogether. To exacerbate your already excruciating pain as you bend to find that phone in the dark, knowing that the next bus won’t come for (at least) 20 minutes. To have the driver who passed you dismiss your righteous anger, dismiss you with his eyes and the tone of his voice and with that word—crazy—on this already humiliating night.
I come from a family of tall, attractive athletes. I have three siblings, and all of them are over six feet. (My sister Carey, the shortest of the three, is 6’1”.) All the other Saulter siblings played sports at a high level. And all of them have head-turning looks.
Unfortunately, those genes missed me. I am barely 5’5”. I suck at pretty much every sport (and TBH, don’t particularly enjoy playing). And the looks … well, let’s just say that no one will ever mistake me for a model. Then again, I did spend a year as a model bus rider back in the day.
I digress.
The only trait I share with my sporty-looker siblings is that I love watching sports. Basketball is by far my favorite, and the team I loved my whole life—starting before I could have imagined the existence of a WNBA—was the Sonics (RIP). I am tempted to spend several paragraphs ranting about the evils of the NBA and professional sports in general, but I will refrain for now and try to stay focused(ish).
This year, for my birthday, my brother Jeremy gave me a gorgeous classic Sonics jacket. It’s far too cool for someone like me, but you don’t have to ask me twice to represent my city. The jacket is lightweight, so I wore it a lot in late spring, before the burning fires of hell descended.
Isn’t she lovely?
I was wearing the jacket when I boarded the 3 early last month, on my way to get a tattoo. (More on that in a future post.) The driver—who, happened to be tall, attractive,* and athletic—was wearing a Sonics mask. We shared the raised eyebrow of recognition and then exchanged compliments.
“Nice mask.” “I like your jacket.”
It was midday and somewhat early in the route, so for a few stops, I was the only passenger on the bus. I paused at the front to answer a few of his questions—where I had gotten the jacket, who was my all-time favorite player—thinking we would exchange a few pleasantries before I made my way to a seat near the back door. But he was so friendly and curious and interesting that we kept talking, and I eventually settled into the BDP seat for a real conversation—at least, as real of a conversation as you can have from several feet away, through masks and a plexiglass barrier.
We started with the Sonics, then moved quickly to my current love, the Storm, who were (are) having a great season. By the time he asked me which sports I played, there were several other passengers on the bus to hear my loud (though muffled) cackle.
I asked him how long he had been driving for Metro and whether he liked it. Four years** and yes. Mostly, anyway. We talked about our kids. He has an eight-year old who is kind and loves football and video games and wants to be just like his dad. Finally, as we headed down the hill from Harborview, I asked his name. Robert.***
At Third and James, a wheelchair passenger was waiting to board. I recognized this man from well over a decade of seeing him on buses and at stops. Robert recognized him, too. They greeted each other like old friends while Robert lowered the ramp, and I moved back to make room for the chair.
For the rest of the ride, I had a front row seat to their conversation. I listened as this elderly man, whose life beyond the bus I had never considered, talked of his younger days, of decisions he wished he had (or hadn’t) made, of relationships that had ended badly. I had never, before that day, seen this man smile or laugh. I watched in amazement as he called Robert by his name, gave him advice, and told him that his “friendly personality” made a difference.
“You’re a really good guy, man,” he said, just as I stood to exit.
Robert paused to look in his rear-view mirror before responding to the compliment.
“Bye, Carla,” he said. “It was really nice talking to you.”
________ * He even favored my brother a bit. ** To be honest, I don’t remember what he said, but I’m pretty sure it was less than five. ***It’s not his real name, but I’m not trying to share all the man’s business on the internet.
Two high school students are sitting behind me, discussing the week ahead.
HS student #1: “Look at all these babysitting jobs on my calendar. That’s why I don’t have a social life—because I’m always babysitting these damn kids.”
HS student #2: “I don’t have a social life because … Asian parents.”
A couple is having a — ahem! — personal argument in the back corner of the bus.
Woman: “It only lasted one minute. I’m going to start calling you Minute Man.” She scoots forward in her seat and begins to shout. “Minute Man! Minute Man!”
A sixtysomething woman stands near the front door looking for her fare. Her purse-digging delays the driver long enough that a forty-ish man running at full speed is able to make it to the stop before the bus pulls away. He walks past the woman on his way to his seat, breathing hard but still looking sharp in a black Kangol and blue silk shirt.
The woman raises her eyebrows.
“You didn’t have to do all that.” she mutters. “You look too good for all that running.”
A group of middle-aged people, dressed like teenagers and walking a tiny dog, board at Broadway. They make their way to the back, chattering as they go.
Woman 1: “I’d rather talk to people I don’t know.”
Woman 2: “I know, me too. After people get to know me, they’re like, ‘I don’t like you. You’re a b*tch.’”
