I recently moved to a quiet, medium-sized Midwestern town to go back to school. My encyclopedic knowledge of mind-altering drugs, transmitted to me in DoseNation editor boot camp, rarely serves any purpose here other than generating awkward silences and adverse notches in my social reputation, but today I was at least able to amuse myself with an observation.
I boarded my bus as the driver got off to use the restroom in the convenience store next to the stop. He came back after a minute or so, sprang into his seat, and floored the accelerator. So far not so bad; everyone wants their bus to stay on schedule. He got up to the intersection of the next right turn. There was a car waiting to turn left. The bus, of course, can't turn right past the car in the left lane. The driver honked the horn once; twice, three times. Then he jumped out of his seat, ran down the steps of the bus and approached the car. The car was already starting its turn, so bus driver turned around and jumped back into the driver's seat and pulled the right turn, accelerating sharply again. We came barreling up behind a woman riding a bicycle, rapidly decelerating at the last possible moment that allowed us to merely tailgate rather than collide per se. The driver pulled that weaving maneuver you do when you're
really anxious to pass someone but there isn't quite a clear spot for it (still tailgating!). After a few hundred yards of this, there was a clear spot and he tore out and around. Two or three stops later, we came to another right turn where traffic was backed up. We waited at the corner for a few seconds; then bus driver was up and out of his seat, running around the corner to inspect, I don't know, the likelihood of his being able to shove all the other cars off the road with his bare hands?? He came running back on to the bus, but didn't get back into the driver seat; he had noticed a few small fragments of debris on one of the front seats, which he picked up and tossed out the window. He proceeded to the back of the bus; I didn't turn around but it sounded like he was performing further sanitary inspection. Then he dashed back up to the front and took out a lunch box from the rack behind the driver's station, and took out a nalgene bottle full of... could it be? Emergen-C perhaps? Something like that. He took a deep, healthy swig, and then put it away and sat down again just as traffic cleared.
My stop was the next stop. I was so amused by his perfect portrayal of the archetypal tweaking bus driver that I almost missed it.
