Severe Jam Damage

If like me you are a regular user of public transport you will notice the world over that people on the bus all look the same, act the same and for the purposes of this entry can be split into three general groups of commuter:

The Regulars - These are the jaded, the tired, the ones who sit in silent resignation when the bus breaks down AGAIN or the driver announces a delay on the train. Regulars tend to sit in the same seat every morning. They carry books, rain macs and extra food on the off chance that the bus goes off the beaten track and the passengers have to resort to cannibalism to survive. Regulars never get lost in foreign cities, one automatic ticket machine is the same as another. All light rail systems look the same.

The Randoms - These are similar to Regulars. They travel on public transport a good deal of the time but may not be there every morning as they occasionally receive lifts from neighbours. Still, they are savvy enough to recognise an automatic ticket machine when they see it. Randoms have no ‘usual seat’ and will sit anywhere on the bus, thus increasing the chances of sitting beside a mentaller. Randoms may have a heightened sense of adventure.

The Bewildered - I couldn’t think of another ‘R’ word to adequately describe this last bunch which ruins my attempt at alliteration. The Bewildered are only using public transport because the car is in the shop and they had no other option. They are the ones who try to put their coins in the ticket reader or wait until they are ON THE BUS with a queue of assorted regulars and randoms behind them to dig out their purse for the fare, which they then pay in 5c pieces and after each coin falls through, squint hopefully at the driver that the fare is now paid.

Yesterday my Father was one of these. The car was ‘in the shop’ so he had to get public transport across town to get it. This morning he was up early so offered me a lift to work. This meant I got to hear all about his adventures yesterday. (I’m not going to use identifiers, I’m sure you can figure out who is who in the dialog below.)
‘I had to get the bus yesterday’
‘Uh huh’
‘Do you know when I left the house a bus JUST passed.’
‘Uh huh’
‘That ALWAYS happens to me, just as I leave the house a bus passes.’
‘Uh huh’
‘And THEN I was waiting 20 minutes for the next one.’
‘Uh huh’
‘TWENTY minutes, can you believe that?’
‘Uh huh’
‘Then we when we got to the top of Glenageary Road the bus stopped. Just… stopped. FOR NO REASON!’
‘Uh huh’
‘I don’t know what had happened but do you KNOW how long it took for the bus to get from our house down to Dun Laoghaire?’
‘Nope’
‘What?’
‘No, I don’t know. Tell me.’
‘THIRTY…. FIVE…. minutes. Can you believe that? Thir-tee Five minutes! That’s incredible isn’t it?’
‘Not really.’
‘So then I said ’sod this for a game of soldiers’ and when we got to Dun Laoghaire I hopped off and ran down to the train station.’
‘Mmm’
‘Then I ended up getting on a commuter train.’
‘Yuh-huh’
‘It didn’t stop till LANSDOWNE ROAD. I wasn’t sure of course, whether to get on. It was a train to Balbriggan. I didn’t know if I was going to town or not. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?’
‘Yeah, yeah, you went to Balbriggan, got it.’
‘So it went ALL the way to LANSDOWNE ROAD without stopping. The next DART wasn’t for seven minutes, so I said I’d try this one.’
‘Uh huh’
‘I’ve never been on one of those commuter trains.’
This last was said wistfully, so that for a moment I wondered if he’d enjoyed himself more than I ever had on public transport.
‘Jaysus, I’m glad to have the car back.’