Life, Death & Transportation

I know, Mel. I’m always telling with bus stories.

It’s interesting how far our transportation system has come, yet how much it has remained the same. My father bought a Suzuki Swift back in 1994. It was our first car. My grandmother had died probably a few months after we got the car, so we that car didn’t see her place very much. We lived in country, she lived in Stony Hill. So, for most of the time she was alive, we could only get to her by bus.

My mother worried about her a lot, and we’d end up making relatively frequent visits to see her. I remember, as a child, squeezing my way into the sardine cans known as buses, traveling from Constant Spring to Stony Hill- I think that bus was the A5 (my memory works, sometimes). I use to love going up there but I’d hate the squeezing, and I’d be terrified of this particular sharp and steep corner on the way there at which point the buses would always struggle to continue, sometimes coming terribly close to stalling. Heads were outside windows, feet at the edge of doors. This was no first-class flight. My mother use to tell me that when she was younger things were 10 times worse than then.

We’re now in the age of robot taxis and JUTC buses. Yet some things don’t feel very different. I waited on the 83 this morning to get to work. I was among a multitude of people awaiting the same bus. One became visible up the road- an articulated one- and the a regular one immediately behind it. The first bus got down to the bus stop, and by the reaction of the people you’d never imagine that the bus were any larger than a Mini Cooper, nor would you believe that there was a second bus. I was in the midst of a plague. But what really made things seem ridiculous to me was that, as I tried to get in the bus, there was a woman behind me that was just too close to me. How close, you ask? Well I can tell you that she wears a 36C bra, used Chanel perfume, and had a little too much to eat this morning. I stood there wondering if she really felt that a few inches of space would have been a bad idea. But in the end, I had to endure her contours until I could make my way into the bus.

On Friday night I did something I never do- I took a coaster to Half Way Tree. The trip was event-free for the most part. The conductor had said the bus was going to Eastwood Park and that’s pretty much where I wanted to go. When we got down, the bus was near empty, and I heard the driver say that something about Spanish Town. IT became evident that that’s where they were going when the bus turned unto Hagley Park Road. So I stopped it at the first bus stop. Remember now, it’s Friday night, and Half Way Tree’s swarmed with people. Apparently, it wasn’t swarmed with buses. As soon as the bus approached the stop and the conductor blurted out ‘Spanish Town!’, Agent Smith and all his clones appeared from all angles and buried the bus. I noticed the approaching swarm just in time and I was literally forced to jump through the door to beat the masses. In the process I got pushed into the side of the doorway, banging my chest.

It’s 2006, and transportation anarchy still reigns.