I used to take the city bus to my college classes. For some people, the bus is an intimate setting -- which can make it a challenge for those who spend the ride pretending they’re somewhere else. Thus, despite the inherent routine, some days on the bus are just different.
There was the day I sat facing the aisle, watching a gaggle of girls of an age I used to be. And you had to watch them -- they made sure of it, the way that young girls can. Sprawled across the long back seat, they chatted loudly in unsubtle codes and giggled over apparently hilarious secrets. They waved their newly purchased lingerie high enough for even the driver to see. They never stopped moving. Or talking.
Now I was probably twenty at most, but these girls made me feel old, and burdened by life. Had I ever been that giddy and carefree? If so I couldn’t remember.
But seconds after the gaggle got off, I noticed an older woman. She was staring at me.
“Those girls are pretty,” she said finally, “but you -- you could be a STAR. . . .” She intoned that last word with a hint of rushing air, a la Sunset Boulevard. The other passengers regarded me dubiously.
I thanked her, to be polite, with a little shrug-eye roll combination acknowledging to everybody else that, yes, clearly, the woman wasn’t quite all there. You gotta love the crazy people, I attempted telepathically.
The irony stayed with me that as I’d watched the young girls, someone had been watching me, probably with that same wistfulness. Walking from the bus stop, I thought then about how, before long, I would be the age of that woman, that I’d remember her.
And here I am.
But when it comes to intimate bus rides, for me, this next one is it.
I don’t even know how to write about this person, I love her so much. I haven’t seen her in more than 30 years. I actually never met her, and I don’t remember what she looked like, except that she wore a long, light-colored overcoat and had brown hair. Yet even today her memory could make me cry.
I was on a crowded downtown bus, planning on spending the ride pretending I was somewhere else. When I first saw her, she was making her way down the aisle, her arms loaded with worn-looking bags of all kinds. I noticed she was stopping at certain rows, leaning in and reaching over the seated passengers, encumbered as she was with all her bags. Polite and purposeful, she was tucking something behind each of the window handles. The other passengers seemed undisturbed; no one even touched whatever it was she was leaving behind.
Then she came to my seat. She was young, possibly still a teen, with a soft delight in her eyes. She reached across me, and finally I saw what she’d been distributing: small, folded bits of torn notebook paper. She pushed one behind the window handle without a word.
She took a seat facing the aisle, settling her bags on her lap. I was across the aisle in the seat just behind, facing forward -- I had a perfect view of her.
In the seat in front of her, a young mother held her fussing baby over her shoulder. The baby’s face was inches from the mysterious paper girl.
The baby started crying, clearly working up to a wail. The mother bounced the baby lightly, making distracted shushing sounds.
Behind the mother’s back, the girl sprang into action, searching among her bags. Within seconds, she pulled out a doll. She held it up and -- without a sound, with no hint of embarrassment -- danced it around. The baby gaped in surprise and went quiet, watching the little show. The mother never turned, never knew that her shushing hadn’t worked.
I was -- who wouldn’t have been? -- instantly smitten.
It was only after she left that I took out her bit of paper. In a childish hand, it read:
TAKE A ROCKET RIDE
Whoa.
Clearly this little wandering spirit was pure Light for Sale. A Master in our midst.
I snagged the other bits of paper that I could. They varied, each some little message. But from them you could tell that she actually called herself Rocket Ride.
Swoonworthy.
I know I found Rocket Ride’s messages around the city three times in all, though sadly for me I can’t remember the second. But when I spotted her one winter outside a supermarket, tucking her paper bits (“Merry Christmas from ROCKET RIDE”) into the change slots of a row of phone booths, I ran up to her, babbling excitedly that I was her Number One Fan.
When I saw my first hummingbird, I shouted, “It’s a HUMMINGBIRD!” The result was exactly the same: Rocket Ride fled me, with fear in her eyes.
I saw then that, while Rocket Ride loved everyone, she couldn’t talk to anyone.
I think a part of Rocket Ride lives in me, and in all of us. The part that, if we knew how much we really loved each other, might well implode from the knowing.
Angels, please bless Rocket Ride.
There was the day I sat facing the aisle, watching a gaggle of girls of an age I used to be. And you had to watch them -- they made sure of it, the way that young girls can. Sprawled across the long back seat, they chatted loudly in unsubtle codes and giggled over apparently hilarious secrets. They waved their newly purchased lingerie high enough for even the driver to see. They never stopped moving. Or talking.
Now I was probably twenty at most, but these girls made me feel old, and burdened by life. Had I ever been that giddy and carefree? If so I couldn’t remember.
But seconds after the gaggle got off, I noticed an older woman. She was staring at me.
“Those girls are pretty,” she said finally, “but you -- you could be a STAR. . . .” She intoned that last word with a hint of rushing air, a la Sunset Boulevard. The other passengers regarded me dubiously.
I thanked her, to be polite, with a little shrug-eye roll combination acknowledging to everybody else that, yes, clearly, the woman wasn’t quite all there. You gotta love the crazy people, I attempted telepathically.
The irony stayed with me that as I’d watched the young girls, someone had been watching me, probably with that same wistfulness. Walking from the bus stop, I thought then about how, before long, I would be the age of that woman, that I’d remember her.
And here I am.
But when it comes to intimate bus rides, for me, this next one is it.
I don’t even know how to write about this person, I love her so much. I haven’t seen her in more than 30 years. I actually never met her, and I don’t remember what she looked like, except that she wore a long, light-colored overcoat and had brown hair. Yet even today her memory could make me cry.
I was on a crowded downtown bus, planning on spending the ride pretending I was somewhere else. When I first saw her, she was making her way down the aisle, her arms loaded with worn-looking bags of all kinds. I noticed she was stopping at certain rows, leaning in and reaching over the seated passengers, encumbered as she was with all her bags. Polite and purposeful, she was tucking something behind each of the window handles. The other passengers seemed undisturbed; no one even touched whatever it was she was leaving behind.
Then she came to my seat. She was young, possibly still a teen, with a soft delight in her eyes. She reached across me, and finally I saw what she’d been distributing: small, folded bits of torn notebook paper. She pushed one behind the window handle without a word.
She took a seat facing the aisle, settling her bags on her lap. I was across the aisle in the seat just behind, facing forward -- I had a perfect view of her.
In the seat in front of her, a young mother held her fussing baby over her shoulder. The baby’s face was inches from the mysterious paper girl.
The baby started crying, clearly working up to a wail. The mother bounced the baby lightly, making distracted shushing sounds.
Behind the mother’s back, the girl sprang into action, searching among her bags. Within seconds, she pulled out a doll. She held it up and -- without a sound, with no hint of embarrassment -- danced it around. The baby gaped in surprise and went quiet, watching the little show. The mother never turned, never knew that her shushing hadn’t worked.
I was -- who wouldn’t have been? -- instantly smitten.
It was only after she left that I took out her bit of paper. In a childish hand, it read:
TAKE A ROCKET RIDE
Whoa.
Clearly this little wandering spirit was pure Light for Sale. A Master in our midst.
I snagged the other bits of paper that I could. They varied, each some little message. But from them you could tell that she actually called herself Rocket Ride.
Swoonworthy.
I know I found Rocket Ride’s messages around the city three times in all, though sadly for me I can’t remember the second. But when I spotted her one winter outside a supermarket, tucking her paper bits (“Merry Christmas from ROCKET RIDE”) into the change slots of a row of phone booths, I ran up to her, babbling excitedly that I was her Number One Fan.
When I saw my first hummingbird, I shouted, “It’s a HUMMINGBIRD!” The result was exactly the same: Rocket Ride fled me, with fear in her eyes.
I saw then that, while Rocket Ride loved everyone, she couldn’t talk to anyone.
I think a part of Rocket Ride lives in me, and in all of us. The part that, if we knew how much we really loved each other, might well implode from the knowing.
Angels, please bless Rocket Ride.
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