Back of the Bus

“You’ll have to move to the back of the bus.”

“Why do I have to go to the back, when all these other people are sitting up her in the front?”

There it was again. Like head ache you get from those newfangled blue headlights, so they can see better at night, but blind everyone else.

I’ve been driving a bus for most of the past twenty years. I said most of, because the disease came, and everything shut down. People were told to stay home or die. Course some of the people thought it was a joke of some kind, so they kept taking the bus. The city put this plastic thing around me to keep me from dying, I guess. It worked, I ain’t dead. Never even got sick, but then my whole family is kind of immune to most things, even the conspiracies, I guess.

They got everyone takin flu shots the last twenty years. I never got one. None of my family got one. Not because we don’t believe they don’t work, nothin funny with them, but we just don’t get the flu. So I can’t say I ain’t glad for the plexiglass shed they built around me, but it did seem a little over the top. People yelling at me cause I couldn’t hear. Me yelling at them cause they couldn’t hear. Lot of not hearing goin on, yelling too. 

But they say that now they got these shots that are goin to be like a miracle and we is all going to be cured even if we never been sick. So they are telling us that we can come back to work cause people aren’t afraid of dying no more. Well, at least from the disease. I think they are still afraid of dying, but I think they’d rather not see it coming. Anyway, they is all coming back, going to work, so I’m goin to start full timing it again. Will be good to have the money, but then I was just getting used to being home. Kind of liked the freedom to go places I am usually too tired to go, or wouldn’t have considered goin, like the zoo.

They got the craziest animals there. We could only go in a few at a time cause of the disease. Don’t really know if it was to protect us from the animals, or the animals from us, but I guess it don’t matter. These monkeys they got there were hugging and kissing, none of the social staying apart for them. Expect they was missing people too, cause they just kind of stared at us when we came and stood by the fence. I thought maybe they’d be jumping around like you see in the movies, swinging, climbing, but there was none of that.

Anyway, I’m back to work. Take a little time to get used to it again. Scheduling and all that. And people, can’t say I missed being yelled at, or asked the dumbest questions. I ain’t a psychiatrist, or mind reader, but you’d never know it by the way people talked at me. This one old woman wanted to know if I’d keep her awake till she got to the stop she was goin. I asked which stop, and she said she had forgot, but would know it when she saw it. She wanted me to talk to her until we got there. Have you ever tried to talk to someone you don’t know, for twenty minutes? Gives you a whole different look at the other side of being old. 

Anyway, things are goin to take some time getting back to the way they was. The masks, the washing of hands, the staying feet from anyone. Hard to do on the bus. They put these yellow feet on the floor so people would know where to stand. No one paid much attention. Could only pick up so many, had to pass the rest by. Lots more yelling when I did that, but the rules is the rules.

Course I’m in this plastic cage so there ain’t much I can do but yell over the speaker system to stay apart, obey the rules, stay safe and don’t forget to wash your hands. They taught us what to say. Got to be like I was an old preacher down at the soup kitchen telling people their souls would be saved if they only prayed. Didn’t work there, and it sure didn’t work on the bus, and believe me, I prayed plenty.

I had thought things might change as the people who were getting sick and dying was becoming less. But then it might just have been that the weakest were the ones to go first, next like in any heard system, it becomes those who are separated from the rest. Only in our case, it was they was separating themselves. One fool got on the bus, ignoring all the signs that you had to wear a mask. Well, they believed it was not their responsibility to protect others, as they felt they was invincible. They couldn’t get sick. And some were right; they couldn’t get sick for God knows what reason, but some could, did.

Now, I didn’t care what you believed, but when you believe your rights is more important than my rights, we got a problem. They are telling us down at the bus garage that things is getting better. People are getting the shots, they are becoming immune or something like it, but that don’t mean peoples changed any. The same ones that didn’t care if I lived or died, ain’t going to start caring that I didn’t. They only care about their rights, mine can go find a different place to live if I don’t like it.

So, I can’t see because we have a way out of this mess, that things are really going to change all that much. People going to think what they think, no matter what I say, it ain’t going to change them any. But I can say this, it did wake up some people to the fact that we are all on the same world, and what happens to one can happen to us all.

I see the same thing coming with the climate situation. There are those who believe the world changes, changes again, changes back, and in the end it’s all the same. But suppose they are wrong. Suppose they are right. Does it really matter when the water is coming in your house, whether someone caused it, or it just happens on its own? You are going to get wet. 

If you are immune to believing when the water comes in the door you ain’t goin to get wet, then I can’t help you. Don’t think anyone can help you. I would however suggest that you might want to plan, not make up stories about it can’t happen, won’t happen, cause it is happening. 

Now if you want to drown that’s your business. But like the disease coming for you and you pretending it’s a joke, and then giving it to me, well, that’s another story. Good chance if you keep acting like you are immune to life, better than everyone else, when time comes and you need a boat ride, or a bus ride to higher ground, I’d suggest you call a cab or an angel.  Cause there won’t be a lot of seats left, and you being you, will probably prefer to swim anyways so as not to disturb your fundamental right to arrogance. 

Everyone has a right to their opinion until it starts interfering with my right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Now if you prefer to walk, you go right ahead, but don’t start messing with other peoples’ right to ride. That is you just trying to be more equal than me, and it just ain’t right.  Says something about that in the Constitution, I think.