Public Transportation and the Art of Avoidance

Public Transportation and the Art of Avoidance -

Many moons ago (or not), I went to a University that was located about thirty minutes from my home town and where I worked. Because of the typical, “poor” college student, first-world problems that so woefully beset me, I did not have my own car to take me back and forth from school to work in the afternoons, so I sometimes took the public bus instead.

Little did I know that the buses in our area seemed to have more than their fair share of oddities and “special snowflakes” riding on them.

After witnessing a few verbal shouting matches that reached a decibel louder than an Italian family reunion, people arguing with themselves in the corner, and someone vomiting on a chair and watching it drip down the aisle, I decided it would be better for everyone – okay, just better for me – if I did everything possible to keep to myself. As such, I incorporated into my bus-riding ritual several brilliant tactics for convincing other people that it just wasn’t worth trying to talk to me.

All of them failed miserably.

I even went so far as to try to use all of the tactics simultaneously:

1.       Headphones on, listening to music

2.       Book open and avidly flipping the pages

3.       Body drawn inward and turned towards the window

4.       Large backpack taking over the chair next to me

5.       Chewing gum loudly with my mouth open

6.       Avoiding eye contact with every single person who got onto the bus

7.       Occasional, unattractive coughing

I did all of these – AT THE SAME TIME.  Feel free to marvel over my multitasking capabilities for a moment, if you’d like.

I still ended up as one of the only people on that bus with a seat mate, who spent the entire ride to my work begging me for my phone number.

I mean, I get it. I’m like, super cool. But seriously?

In my naïve state, I actually gave the poor fellow my number before hopping off the bus in front of my work just to get him out of my hair. After all, I could just ignore his phone calls, right? He must not have understood the practice of subtlety, because in the three minutes it took me to walk to the back room of my department and put on my work apron, I had already gained two missed calls from him, as well as a text message.

Frowning, I sent him a quick text reminding him I just got off the bus for work and could not use my phone during this time. A couple hours into my shift I went on break, and lo and behold, due to my astounding good luck, I now had four missed phones calls from him, and additional text messages that were essentially nothing more than a series of “hey, hi, how ya doin” and smiley faces.

William Wordsworth, he was not.

He wasn’t even a Tupac.

Now, I’ve regretted many things in life, but I have never had a regret so instantaneous as the moment after I gave him my phone number.

I can’t recall just how many times he called and sent me text messages in the days that followed, but I do know the number was, like, A LOT. I would have responded to him out of politeness after the first couple of texts, but he sent me so, so many before I had even checked my phone the first time at work that my spidey senses were tingling, and I decided to ultimately ignore them and wait it out. After all, he had to give up eventually, right?

….right?

WRONG. Very wrong indeed.

My phone soon reminded me of that scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when Harry starts getting letters sent to him at the Dursley’s home, and when they are thrown away initially by his mean uncle, chaos ensues, and pretty soon, we’ve got letters sticking out of the front door, coming down from the sky, under our feet, in our ears and out the wahzoo.

My phone blew up.

One day, I’d finally had it with this boy’s stalker-ish tendencies and I finally did what any self-confident, responsible, mature twenty-something would do.

I lied.

I texted him and told him that while I appreciated his interest, I had just gotten a new boyfriend, like, yesterday, and this boyfriend did not want me to text other guys, so our almost-friendship would unfortunately be unable to continue.

He wanted to know my boyfriend’s name.

Jake, I said, because why not?

Why didn’t my boyfriend want me talking to other guys?

Because he gets jealous, obviously. My made-up new boyfriend is a very jealous sort.

Is he tall?

Yes, he is very tall. He is six foot five.

We could still talk in secret, he said. It’s okay if I’m interested in other guys since I’m not married to him yet.

It’s the strangest thing, but at that exact moment, my phone suddenly experienced an unexpected malfunction that caused it to break and prevented me from sending any more messages. Even stranger still, he was the ONLY person I couldn’t send the messages to.

Imagine that.