You Ride The Little Bus!

Of all the days the week the worst weather fell on the day that I had to be out and about. The day was wet and cold accompanied by a chilling wind. Luckily I did not have to go far in my travels. Across the street in the morning in falling snow to my dentist office and later in the afternoon when the whether was just cold to  book club.

The book club is held in the afternoon, the late afternoon, the day had taken a drain on me. I was cold and tired by 3:15 PM when th 217  stopped to pick me up for my journey to the library. I was getting in a mood, you know the kind that mood when you just want to be left alone being enveloped by heat in the bus and get on to your destination. I figured I would get some rest maybe a micro-nap and be good for First Chapter. I got a weird sensation when the bus pulled up and I was wondering if the driver was going to tell me I was going to have to wait for the next bus because he was already carrying two wheelchairs. (There are only two wheelchairs stations on each of our buses here in Salt Lake). The premonition was partially right. There were no wheelchairs but one individual deboarded the bus using a walker, that's cool but as I boarded the bus, coming up the ramp and turned the corner there was another individual with a walker being moved from the seat covering the tie-downs where I would have to be seated and this individual was not a happy camper. Her face was a storm cloud of anger and it was all directed towards me. I at first thought that she was possibly a person with developmental disabilities and she very well could have been, but then I realized she was a person who had a significant head injury. Regardless of ideology of disability she had pure hatred for me and soon as you let me know “why don't you ride the little bus?!” “Make him ride the little bus!” This woman with head injury was obviously talking about the Flex-trans vehicles operated by Utah transit Authority for people with mobility disabilities. This was the last thing I wanted to have to deal with right then.

The irony of the situation was he was a person with a disability significant enough that she could be riding Flex trans herself. If in fact here was somebody who was supposed to be using Flex trans it was her. In another situation I would have been proud of this person choosing to use the public transit mainline. I wanted to engage with her and tell her that I've been part of the battle to make these buses accessible to everyone. I want to tell her that I did not believe in the “little buses” because they were not only politically incorrect but not fair to populations of people with disabilities who turn on each other in situations like this. I also wanted to attack this person because of her disability, because of her ruining my trip to First Chapter. I wanted to use words and inflect my voice in ways that would hurt her because of the disability she had. However, I also realized that no matter what I did or said she would not understand, she would not care all she knew was that she was getting kicked out of her seat by a wheelchair person that she felt did not belong on a public bus. Nothing, I could say would change her mind. The best I can do was to clam up turn and look out the window and enjoy what I could of this ride on a cold and wet Thursday afternoon to my First Chapter book club.