For the first time in a very long time I found myself on a transit bus the other day. Why you ask? Well, I smeared my car onto a guard rail whilst avoiding a texting driving twit, so I was riding the bus to pick up my rental car. It was, blessedly, a short ride, albeit pretty luxurious compared to the mid 80's red menace known as the TTC.
In that short ten minute commute I was taken back to my youth when that was the only way to get around when a car wasn't an option. For 50 cents you could travel the city all you wanted if you played your cards, or transfers, right. All manner of people watching was to be had. Not to mention misadventure and, as always, tomfoolery. One may even find a story or two to file away in the why is he still alive category.
In between my first and second year of cooking school I spent the summer working monster hours at the newly opened Skydome in the heart of Toronto. A stupid busy summer that gave me a taste of the future with regards to my work/life balance, or lack there of, as the case was. When you show up for work at 9:00 and don't get off until 11:00 or so, nine and ten days in a row you tend to lose some of your friends. You also lose a bit of perspective on reality. That summer my world was reduced to the confines of my little satellite kitchen where we would sling 400 or 500 "gourmet" sandwiches a night, my bed and the public transit needed to transport me from Front street to the suburban wilds of Etobicoke.
On a good day I could count on about an hour each way in commute time. On a bad day, tack on an extra 45 minutes at the end of your day. So, 13 or 14 hours spent at work along with a couple of hours of bus and subway time leaves little time for extra curricular activities, as you can well imagine. My stop on the way home was quite literally near the end of the line so I was usually alone at that time of night coming home. The bus driver being my only companion. Not that it mattered, I had my Walkman playing tunes and I was usually asleep way before my exit. So much so that the bus driver would often wake me up at my stop once he saw I was a regular.
The complete opposite in the morning though. By the time the bus got to the station it was completely packed. The subway would fill up as we made our way down to Union station. Kipling, Islington, Runneymede and so on. This is when the transit system really earned its keep in my view. Thousands upon thousands of stories, elbow to elbow in that death tube hurtling underground. Many days I was lost in a book but on the occasions that I would look up to see the world I was hardly ever disappointed. I've been flirted with by both sexes, threatened by wannabe thugs, looked down upon by the "socs" and on more than one occasion been nearly trampled to death by the hordes. Always interesting.
We, my swirling vortex of idiot friends and I, discovered that you could pry open the doors on the subway while it was moving. I know, you're asking yourself why in the fuck would you want to do that? These are the reasons that women live longer than men. I'm sure it dawned on us that maybe doing this wasn't a good idea but we still did it anyway. As we were heading home from a concert one night we nearly got arrested for just such prying. As the subway raced through the darkened tunnels we would open the doors, at first only slightly but we worked our way up to the point that you could slip through the gap easily enough. To what end? Because we could and we were young and stupid. We all thought it was pretty funny. The operators of the train did not. I guess an alarm goes off in a control car when a door is opened at the wrong time. We denied it mightily as we were confronted by a TTC cop/conductor but he was having none of it. I figured we were toast at the next stop and we very well came close...the real police were not amused but I think doing paperwork for a few rebel teenagers was less appealing. Once again, a charmed life right? And I didn't die.
And then there was the time that the bus driver had had enough of every high school student that ever lived. His rage built up to the boiling point that coincided with a nice fall day when his bus was jam packed with all manner of young hormones. Attending a Catholic high school with our shitty uniforms was no guarantee of good behaviour, visual impressions aside. And Newtons law of mass x testosterone over angst to the square of piss and vinegar means that a bus full of us was going to be noisy. And it was. The more rambunctious of us polyester clad hoodlums would ring the bell for the next stop even though there was no one getting off. The driver would stop and people would laugh. It would happen again, and again. The driver couldn't see anything for all the bodies in the way so he had to assume that a legitimate stop was being called for. Finally he had enough, as the stop for the school approached, the bus driver ignored the repeated bells and blazed right past the stop. It was quite funny to see the panic set in, "hey man, stop the bus!!!" and "I'm going to be late for class!!!" rang out. The volume slowly raised to a dull roar as the bus continued on, bells ringing and the driver still ignoring us all. He passed the next stop and the one after that...and I swear to you as he finally stopped to let everyone out he yelled out go fuck yourselves to us all. The bus was stopped on the other side of the highway overpass....bahahahahahahaha. I had a spare first period so I could not care less about getting to school on time...truth be told I wouldn't care either way since I was fully immersed into social life as opposed to school life. But boy oh boy were there some pissed off students on that bus. Every version of I'm telling on you was being spewed forth...can you imagine if they had Twitter or Facebook back then, the son of a bitch would have been fired before getting back to the station. But sure as shit he was there the next day and the next after that. I'm chuckling just thinking about it.
While I have no desire to get back on the bus it was interesting to find myself at the back once again. Like a trip back in time.....at least for a few minutes.
Ciao
D
Socs???
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