Bus Ride to Humiliation

Bus Trip to Humiliation

(a true story)

When I was nineteen, I lived in Winnipeg and worked in an office out near the Winnipeg Airport, on the outskirts of the city. I took the city bus to work and back each day. My stop was the very last one on the bus route before the airport.

At five o'clock when I got off work, I caught the bus again for my ride back uptown. I was renting a room in a boarding house, just a few blocks from the Hudson Bay's huge block-square store on Portage Avenue, right in the heart of the city.

Each night, there would be the same five older men on the bus when it stopped to pick me up. They were dressed in coveralls, and I thought they likely were maintenance workers at the airport.

At night, I always sat near the back doors, so it would be easy to exit the bus when we got uptown. It was a very busy bus stop, in front of the Hudson Bay store.

There was always a large crowd of people waiting to get on the bus, shoppers and people who worked downtown and were heading home.

On this hot August day, I had chosen a light-weight sleeveless blouse and pleated rayon skirt to wear to work. It was the coolest skirt I owned and just perfect for such a scorching summer day.

However, the skirt had a problem: the zipper would come open all by itself, when the button on the waistband was undone. Therefore, I always pinned the waistband, besides buttoning it.

The day was uneventful until the bus trip home that afternoon. The bus was almost uptown, when a large lady got on the bus and sat down on the seat beside me. I didn’t notice at the time, but she was on the edge of my full skirt.

When I stood up to get off the bus, my skirt didn’t come with me. The safety pin popped, as did the button, as the skirt was pulled out from under the woman. To my horror, the skirt was suddenly down around my ankles.

In shock, like a reflex, I grabbed my skirt and pulled it up with both hands holding the waistband. I marched off the bus, along with the others who were getting off at the Hudson Bay store, and tried to disappear into the busy crowd.

I was terrified beyond description, lest someone saw my predicament, but hoped that, in the crush of people, it might have gone unnoticed. I was young and shy in those days, and it was way beyond humiliating, with a huge capital H!

Hurrying home, still clutching my skirt in place, by the time I’d walked a few blocks, I finally relaxed enough to stop and do the zipper and button up again, and prayed that nobody had seen my embarrassing mishap.

I wasn’t to get off that easy. The next day at work, I kept my head down and did my work, trying to act as normal as if the sky hadn’t fallen on me the night before.

All was well until I boarded the bus for my ride back home.

Those five old men, like every night, were sitting in the back seat of the bus. As soon as I boarded, they started talking excitedly.

“There she is!”

“Did you see her last night?”

“Her skirt fell down and she just grabbed it and walked off as if nothing had happened!”

“Yeah, she didn’t even look at anyone, she just marched away like nothing was wrong!”

There was a lot of rehashing the story, laughs and crude jokes between the men. 

I just kept facing the front of the bus as if I hadn’t heard a thing. What else could I do?

As each person they knew got on the bus, they told the story over and over again. My face must have been beet red with humiliation. My only defense was to ignore them, and pretend I hadn’t heard a thing.

That went on all that week. I must have given those poor old men the only excitement in their lives.

Finally, after the weekend, I didn’t hear any more comments from the back seat, but the embarrassment was burned into my mind for life.

It’s not like I was bare-bum under my skirt; I had underwear and a slip, so they really didn’t see anything that outrageous. But it must have been quite a scandal to them.

You can be sure I never wore that skirt again. It disappeared from my closet, stuffed unceremoniously into a garbage bag and tossed out of my life for good after that episode.

The skirt had soft orange flowers and light green leaves on an ivory background. It was quite cool and fresh looking, a pretty skirt for hot summertime weather.

But I never liked the color orange before, and even less after that day. In fact, I’ve never worn any orange clothing since.

Over time, the humiliation has faded, and now I can laugh about it. But at the time, it was devastating. Especially having to ride that bus every night, hearing those silly old men rehash the event.

I’m sure there’s a connection to the recurring nightmares I have occasionally experienced, where I’m running away in my underwear and trying to hide in a crowd, mostly made up of laughing men. They are pointing at me as I flee, and the crowd always parts, and to my dismay, there’s nowhere to hide.

Sometimes, in my dreams, I’m trying to exit a bus, and I trip on the steps, falling onto the sidewalk with said skirt up around my ears. Always it’s the humiliation caused by the skirt that is uppermost in my mind, not the skinned knees or scraped elbows or other injuries sustained in the fall.

Last September, I saw hundreds of people wearing orange tee shirts with various pictures and the slogan, “Every Child Matters.”

They were in remembrance of the thousands of Native American children who were abused and the hundreds who died in the notorious “Residential Schools.”

I whole heartedly support them, and would love to wear a shirt to say so, if only they came in another color. But they were all bright orange, the color of ripe oranges. I cannot wear that color. It clashes with my pink complexion, making me look a sickly green.

Besides it reminds me, like it was just yesterday, of that embarrassing event when I wore that skirt with orange flowers. The memory haunts me still.