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| Riding Public Transit 101As you may or may not know, I am a public transit operator. For the
most part, I love my job. The routine is relatively diverse, so far as
jobs go anyway; I don’t have a shop foreman or office manager
constantly looking over my shoulder. I am the captain of my ship and
the passengers are my cargo. Generally speaking, the people who ride
the bus are friendly and unobtrusive—just regular city folk trying to
get to and from school or work as conveniently and economically as
possible. And then there are “the others”. Those on the margins of
society who are riding the bus for one basic reason—they don’t (or
can’t) own a car. And why is that? Why can’t someone own a car? One of
two reasons: They don’t have the mental, physical or financial
wherewithal to maintain one; or they are so fucked-up that no
reasonable judge, lawyer, doctor or social worker could possibly
concede that they are responsible enough to drive one. And what's their
alternative? Welcome to:
Riding Public Transit 101
If you are waiting at a bus stop that serves more than one bus route, and the bus that you are not waiting for approaches, take one giant step back from the bus stop while shaking your head, “no”. This simple gesture tells the bus driver that you do not want that particular bus, without the driver stopping the bus and opening the door while you stand there and stare at him or her—wasting everyone’s time except yours.
When you step into a bus, acknowledge the driver in some fashion, however slight. For example, you could make eye contact or nod or smile or simply say “hi”. The driver is not a vending machine or a cyborg—he or she is a human being and deserves the simplest social considerations, just like you.
If you are talking on your cell phone while boarding the bus, politely pause your conversation whilst paying your fare. The same applies if you are wearing headphones or ear-buds. The polite thing to do during any human transaction is to remove them briefly in the off chance that the person you are transacting with may actually have something to tell you.
If you require a transfer, politely ask for one while paying your
fare—don’t just stand there like a mental patient waiting for your
pills. Transfers aren’t door prizes—they don’t get handed out for just
any reason. And please don’t just point to the transfer holder—open
your mouth and say the words, “transfer please”. Unless you don’t speak
English, or are mentally retarded, it’s the least you can do.
If you do not have the exact fare, tell the driver! Don’t just throw a handful of pennies and nickels in the fare box and walk on by. Most drivers will let you ride for free if you don’t have the correct fare, but no driver likes to be duped. The fare box automatically counts the change, so you aren’t actually fooling anyone; you are simply setting yourself up for a potentially embarrassing scolding in front of the other passengers from a burly, 290-lb., bearded bus driver. And that’s just the female ones.
Once you board the bus, pick a seat and sit down as quickly as possible. The bus will be merging back into traffic within a few seconds, so unless you want to go reeling down the aisle like an epileptic at an exorcism, sit-the-fuck-down. No one wants to see that shit.
Before you leave your home, find out where you are going and how you will be getting there. Unless your destination has a large, neon arrow pointing to it, I probably don’t know where it is. I’m not your personal assistant, nor your chauffeur. I don’t work for MapQuest or the Yellowpages—I’m a bus driver. If you provide me with an address of where you are going, I will probably be able to get you to the bus stop nearest to it. I don’t know where “Reptiles-R-Us” is, and I don’t know which bus goes by “The Hungry Greek Diet Centre”. Do your homework before you leave your house!
If it’s past 11 p.m. and you are under the age of twenty, you shouldn’t be pushing a baby stroller. So unless you live alone, and you have been out to the clinic for an emergency methadone injection, the baby should be at home in bed. No one wants to listen to your crack-addicted baby scream while you wipe dried blood from your nose. Go the fuck home already!
The new, “low-floor” style of bus is designed to accommodate those mobility carts that you see so many people riding around in. Assuredly, they serve their purpose well, enabling seniors and the physically challenged to go about their lives as routinely as possible. However, unless you actually can’t walk more than a block, you shouldn’t be riding around in one—they aren’t go-carts. And the irony is, the more you insist on needlessly riding around in one, the more likely you will actually need one eventually. Get off your ass before it’s impossible to even have a choice.
When you ring the bell for your stop, please do so well in advance. A city bus is approximately thirty tons of glass and steel, flying down the road at speeds in excess of 30-50 mph, requiring at least 300-feet to stop safely. Keep in mind, it’s a bus, not a helicopter—the pilot can’t just “set ‘er down” because you were daydreaming.
If my sign reads, "OUT OF SERVICE" when I pass you at the bus stop,
please don't take it personally by flipping me the finger. Not every
bus that passes your stop is your bus, the same way that every
minivan that passes you isn't your mom.
Marty  | | |
| The Lake
The blackness of the lake’s water confirmed its depth—a bottomless abyss so cold it could barely sustain life. The razor-thin horizon of the ominous steel-blue sky gently pressed against the surface of the lake. Along its shores nothing stirred save an occasional gust of raw wind that rattled the autumn leaves and threw them violently into a muddied palette of orange and crimson on the ground. Cattails and bulrushes stabbed out of the marshy sponge-land adjoined to the lake’s still depths. As silent as the abyss seemed to be, its soggy surge was crafty, relentlessly inching inland, slowly invading the sand and soil. Slender whips of the overhanging willow slapped at the marauding water in a bid to protect its turf. A solitary hill hunkered in the east and stood guard over the lake, seeing all, but saying nothing. Monochrome clouds, heavy with rain, floated near the hilltop like wounded zeppelins, as slivers of lightning infused the sky with light, trying to outrun the chasing thunder. Atop the tallest of the pines sat a crow, its head seemingly jointless as it swiveled robotically near 360 degrees. From its perch it could see the forgotten dock barely afloat near the lake’s furthest shore. Rickety from years spent alone—its cottage companion long vanished, a victim of a single, merciless bolt from the quiver of Thor. Only the stony foundation remained—the crow’s last reminder that it had once shared the lake with others. Remnants of a trail wound its way from the foundation to a patch of weedy brambles--threshold to the impenetrable forest beyond. And what lay beyond remained beyond, held in check by timber centurions, the moroseness of the lake forever sealed. | | |
| Anyone still here?Just checking... 
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| Hear No evil
 On a warm spring's day in May 1998, Kip Kinkle, a fifteen-year-old boy from Springfield, Oregon, shot and killed both his father and his mother. The following day, he walked into his high school cafeteria and opened fire with a 9mm Glock semiautomatic pistol, killing two of his fellow students and wounding twenty-five others. Less than two years later Kip Kinkle would be found guilty of his crimes and sentenced to over one hundred and eleven years in prison. The American legal system was able to impart justice, but it failed to successfully establish the exact motives behind Kip's murderous rampage. The debate is ongoing and experts agree that there was probably far more going on inside of Kip's young brain than what was revealed at the trial.
It must be established early on that, Kip, in many ways was a typical teenager. He enjoyed listening to music, watching movies, and playing video games. He had a reasonable number of friends, an older sibling, and seemingly supportive and loving parents. His interest in martial arts, knives, and guns, albeit potentially violent, was not considered particularly abnormal for an American teenager--the culture in which he lived promoted such things as "hobbies." What wasn't typical about Kip Kinkle was the secret he kept about the voice in his head; a voice that he tried so hard to hide from the world. The voice obviously disturbed Kip--he knew it wasn't supposed to be there. He also knew that if he told anyone about it, the embarrassment and potential ridicule could be overwhelming.
A year prior to his rampage, Kip's mother, due in part to his depression and antisocial behavior--Kip liked to set off explosives when he was angry--, had scheduled nine consultations with a child psychologist spread over six months. During these sessions Dr. Jeffrey Hicks did establish that Kip was depressed and had some anger management issues. Hicks worked with him in developing alternate ways of expressing himself and, as so often happens when the real answers can't be found, prescribed the antidepressant, fluoxetine (Prozac.) Due to either a lack of information, or simply poor diagnoses, Dr. Hicks was unable to detect the early stages of paranoid schizophrenia in Kip, who, for his part, did not mention the auditory hallucinations in his head. The medication evidently kept the voice at bay for a time, but in the end may have been a contributing factor to his final violent episode. Studies on the effect of Prozac and similar antidepressants are inconclusive in regards to how they react on specific forms of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia. Contrary to the testimony of two other child psychologists, both of whom interviewed Kip after his arrest, Dr. Hicks maintained at the trial that Kip was not mentally ill.
Like every other teenager on the planet, Kip had some relationship issues. On the surface they appeared relatively "normal" problems: his girlfriend had recently ended their relationship, and he had an apparent distrust for adult authority--his father in particular. As normal as these relationship issues appeared to be, Kip was seemingly ill-equipped to deal with them in a "normal" manner. He often took to setting off explosives, or writing bizarre entries in his secret journal--writing of his loneliness, his self-hatred, rage, and apparent recognition that there was something terribly wrong with his brain. A part of him, however, clung to a realization that he did care for others. Even in his angered ramblings, written right after he murdered his parents, Kip confessed, "I love my mom and dad so much..." His note was a confused confession of guilt, and a heartfelt admission that he was the disappointment, and that it was he who had failed them. He wrote about the voice as well, and with the post-trial suspicion that Kip was already in the early stages of schizophrenia at the time of the shootings, it seems a pathetic irony that Kip was the only one who knew it.
Sociologists have already drawn some conclusions as to the effect of music with depressing lyrics, violent movies, and first-shooter video games, on teenagers and the antisocial behavior sometimes acted out. The general consensus is that violent forms of media, although not directly the cause of any such incidents, are unequivocally catalysts to the cause; the desensitization of youth to bloodshed and violence does little to uphold moral deterrents. However, in the case of Kip Kinkle, it can be argued that, with or without these outside suggestive forces, he was already on a fast track to some form of breakdown due to his mental illness, and his inability to convey the seriousness of it to his family and doctor.
Perhaps Kip knew all along what was in store for him. And had he been able to overcome his embarrassment, and the stigma that goes with being mentally ill, things could have maybe turned out differently. At his trial, Dr. Richard J. Konkol, a pediatric neurologist, showed to the court, computerized scans of Kip's brain and the defects in his frontal lobe that received reduced blood-flow and undoubtedly affected his emotional control and decision making process. Dr. Konkol added that, this condition, although serious, was not untreatable. This was the only hope that Kip Kinkle had ever been offered--and the only time during the entire trial that he lifted his head from the table. Somewhere in his brain Kip had always known that it wasn't really his father, or the music, or the guns, or the kids at school that had made him this way--but the voice in his head had deceived him into blaming everyone and everything except itself--schizophrenia.
Marty 
"The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
~ Albert Einstein 1879-1955 | | |
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