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Weird People on the Bus

 

 

I Love Lucy subway image - woman wearing a vase on her head on a train with passengers staring at her


I've noticed lately there's almost a cult on youtube of people filming antisocial behavior on public transportation. The range of antisocial behavior is wide, but of course obvious brawls accompanied by foul language are almost sure to go viral, or at least get multitudinous views. 

Not surprising, this trend, in a world where senior citizen middle school bus monitors are brutally scapegoated (the Karen Klein incident) or where a girl is brutally attacked by her peers (not in public, but the video was disseminated on the Internet), and her attackers are even thrilled when they end up on the news after they get arrested (see the Lifetime movie, Girl Fight, based of course on a true story). Overall, these incidents (and many others) point to a disturbing pathology of voyeurism and narcissism. 
 

Karen Klein on bus - video stills

I'm not necessarily espousing the view of many “Make America Great Again” people who support the (ah, so ironic given my opinion here, the vulgar boor "President") where American was supposedly a kinder, gentler (maybe the word is genteel), less narcissistic place in their white bread 1950s. But in the days when one got dressed up to go outside (remember, Ethel Mertz would never wear blue jeans on the subway), one wonders if one's clothing might somehow reflect or even monitor one's behavior. Of course, one can act like a brute in a suit (again, look at the vulgar boor), but still, I wonder. 


I do wonder how many fights occurred on buses in the 1950s. But then, one couldn't just immediately whip out a phone and film them for posterity. 

Cell phone footage still from CTA bus fight

But when one takes “public transportation,” and in Chicago, that means the CTA (Chicago Transportation Authority), one is exposed to a vast array of people and their behavior. And in Chicago, especially, where “public transportation” is considered to be the province of lower-status people, there's a stigma. 

 

Crowded public transportation


One takes the bus only when one is too poor to own a car, or disabled, or old, or very young, or non-white. And one only takes it when one's car breaks down. And it's almost like if you own a car, even in densely populated areas where you don't really need one, you've made it. And the high-end developments going up almost always contain garages. 

And in Chicago, certain bus lines are stigmatized in the stigmatized CTA system and those who take it. The number 36, Broadway, carries a reputation for being the bus “weirdos” take. Yet that bus goes through an area of Chicago, Uptown, an area especially hard hit by the lack of governmental funding for certain programs released mentally disturbed people onto the streets from shelters and other facilities. 

I'm not certain which other routes carry this stigma, and I don't want to overgeneralize that buses in underserved areas carry passengers who are necessarily more dangerous or “weird.” Well, there was the woman on one bus on the South Side who claimed to be a bike; see this photo. 
 

Woman riding on bike rack on CTA bus

Anyway, I've been taking the CTA for a long time (for multiple reasons, and I fit some of the stereotypes of those who take it), and I've seen much, but an incident that occurred on the number 81, Lawrence bus, (which travels through one of the most ethnically diverse areas in Chicago) stood out. 
 

Number 81 Lawrence CTA bus

I was waiting for it with my friend from out of town. We had just returned from the casino. We saw a frowsy older woman (maybe sixtyish) with very short hair and very thick round coke-bottle glasses practically leap in front of the bus as it pulled into the terminal; yes, she leaped right in front of the yellow line. The sign tells you to not cross that yellow line. The bus driver, a heavyset African-American woman, yelled at her, harshly, claiming that she had almost hit her as the bus pulled in because she crossed the line. I got the sense this woman takes this bus regularly and always disobeys the sign, and may have been almost hit previous times as the bus pulled in. I heard her respond snarkily to the bus driver, “I have to be the first on the bus.” Uh, OK ... 

Yes, she was, and she sat down and pulled out what looked like some kind of Christian fundamentalist tract from one of her multiple bags (yes, a cliché, but watch for multiple bags, and I don't mean newly minted bags from a recent shopping trips to Macy's or Bloomingdales). My friend (we were sitting a couple of seat pairs behind her) saw she had made many notes on one of the pages. The theme of the tract was the usual societal decay apocalyptic doom end of the world scenario, and my friend later told me he was able to even decipher one of her notes on a section of the tract: It's the television, the source of evil. 

I must claim, though, based on what I said about these viral videos, she may not be that far off track, but I imagined her sitting in her tiny apartment wearing a tin foil hat monitoring the Satanic messages coming in from a test pattern. 

But then, and this is where her behavior became really bizarre and offensive, a young Hispanic woman got on with a baby in a stroller. The woman with the baby pulled down the disabled seats right in front of the weird woman so she could get the stroller out of everyone's way. The weird woman proceeded to hold her nose. She then retrieved from one of her multiple bags a small, sample-size container of Lysol and spray it around her. 
 

Lysol

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. My mouth remained open. Shock. 

Weird woman exited at Pulaski and Lawrence, not exactly a high-class area. In fact, it looked rather overcrowded and depressed. Gentrification had not arrived. Many people were thus waiting for buses. 

And no, I did not film this incident. I'm not sure what conclusions I can draw, but I get the sense, other than that the woman was obviously disturbed, that perhaps she was one of the people who lived around Pulaski and Lawrence in the sixties or even the fifties when the area was white, and I think, predominately Jewish. And she was still living there. But the world changed around her. She couldn't embrace the change as positive and took refuge in a reality that could be safe only by through segregation and scapegoating. 

And this disturbing dynamic is still occurring as youtubers film and view videos that show “the other” as someone or, more accurately, something, to be mocked and dehumanized by not only physical strangers, but by millions, even billions of impersonal, invisible voyeurs. 

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Confession: Eating Outside Is Overrated

 

“Let's eat outside. It's such a nice day.”
“Wanna go to a cookout? I am putting meat on the grill.”
“This place has a great rooftop garden.” 

Al fresco for me is literally for the birds. (In fact, I often imagine swarms of birds “doing their business” over unaware outside diners who suddenly realize a topping from the sky has been added to their burgers. Ick.) 

Eating outside is overrated. I just don't get the appeal. 
 

Disasterous Picnic

The reasons? Perhaps more personal than objective, but in this case, it's a matter of taste (and ambience) or maybe even some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Insect invasion: My brother was stung by a bee twice, yes twice, when we were eating outside in the backyard. In one case, he sat on the bee. Yes, who wants to eat out and suffer from bees circling around, attracted by whatever you are eating? And not just bees, but other insects, flies, of course. A fly on a paper plate sums up for me the joy of eating outside. And note that these were the days before many homeowners built elaborate decks (all this trouble to build something to eat outside on; seems odd to me). We ate outside on decaying wooden picnic tables placed directly on grass, grass which harbored ants, grasshoppers, and other swarming, creeping things. 
 

Fly on a hamburger

Destructive winds: One time at a family barbeque event the wind was so strong it actually lifted an umbrella out of the center of a table and carried it across the yard. Mary Poppins, eat your heart out. Yes, winds can blow paper plates, rip off those temporary tablecloths, knock over paper and plastic cups filled with liquids. Rather than focusing on the food, one ends up focusing on preventing the trappings you have created to hold the food from blowing into your face or falling onto the insect-infested grass. 

Heat-related disasters: I date from the times of charcoal grills. Either the coals would not light, or one time a raging inferno occurred because I put an excessive amount of lighter fluid on the coals (I was impatient; for corn's sake, let's just turn on the stove). And then there's the ice cream issue. Yes, ice cream is suitable for summer, but guess what? It melts. All over. And then there's always the possibility of the melting ice cream falling off the cone, especially if a small child is holding the cone. Oh, the humanity. Especially for children whose faces end up looking like they fell into a mud pit. 
 

Melting ice cream cone

Voyeurs: You are sitting outside in your yard or deck or whatever. The neighbors next door are outside, perhaps not eating. Yet they can watch every chew, hear every slurp, every burp. They might ben be able to record it and put it on Facebook. Status: My neighbors are eating outside. I don't want people, especially people you don't know very well, watching my eating habits. Not that I necessarily eat sloppily, but have you ever looked at films of yourself eating? It's not a pretty site. I don't want to be remembered as someone whose mouth is filled with hamburger and potato chips. So much for going back to nature by eating out. 
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We've developed complex dwellings replete with all kinds of amenities, such as stainless steel kitchens and elegant formal dining rooms. Let's eat inside them. And don't ask me to eat out. Just don't. I'm still recovering from too many eating out events that resembled the plagues of Egypt. I'll take a pass over (pun intended) any invites. I would rather invite you in for dessert! 

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