Cast of Characters

I have a lot of inner dialogue about the people on the bus and wonder about them. I wonder why they ride the bus, where they are going, if I will see them again and make predictions about their personalities outside the bus. That is the interesting part about these people, I only get a tiny piece of them so I can make up the rest in my inner dialogue. The route I take goes by 2 middle schools, 2 high schools, the University, a hospital and on to downtown; that is just the part that I ride so you can imagine the types of people I see. My morning bus has the most regulars, if you could call them that. I give a lot of them names and since I might mention now and then, here is my cast of characters:

• Mother Hen. She used to always be at my stop in the morning and we would chat about the weather or where the bus was. She chats with all the regulars and comments on their hair, family, etc. She always has a bit of a smile on her face, we exchange glances and shake our heads at the idiots, she must work downtown and probably the safest person on the bus. However, she disappeared from my morning stop one day. I still often see her on my evening route but I'm confused. Sometimes she gets off at my stop, but goes either left, right or across the street. Other times she gets off at totally different stops. What is she doing?! 

• Overbearing White Mexican mom and pre-teen daughter with rolly bag: The mom barely speaks English, but you would never know by looking at her. The pair of them are always on my morning route. Pre-teen daughter with rolly bag must go to the Catholic school across the street from the hospital and the mom always gets off with her. I wonder if the mom works at the hospital, or walks her daughter up to the front door of the school, then gets back on the bus. I get a kick out of the daughter always rolling her eyes when her mom fusses with her hair or tells really loud stories to her about god knows what. I'm pretty sure the mom does all the art projects too, because they are pretty sophisticated.

• Blind Knitting lady. She most definitely has been riding the bus for a long time because she knows all the bus drivers and talks to overbearing White Mexican mom and pre-teen daughter with rolly bag about knitting. Sometimes I find the 3 of them sitting squished together when the bus is pretty empty. Odd. However, blind knitting lady has cute mary jane shoes. 

•  Most of the high school kids on the morning bus. I mostly want to know who they are all texting at 7:30 in the morning!?

• Ginger Gary Sinise. This guy was a character. He was always awkwardly crossing his legs to form a makeshift table to do his sudoku. He would crunch his face up trying to figure out the sudoku and would look up in hopes of making eye contact with someone so he could tell them about the difficult sudoku. Haven't seen him since the time he must have been drinking at work because on the evening bus he was telling some hilarious story to a random guy who was pretty freaked out by Ginger Gary Sinise since he kept putting his arm around him and laughing hysterically in his ear.

• Gallagher/Santa Claus: he is fairly regular on my morning route. He looks like across between Gallagher the comedian and a smaller version of Santa Claus, and has this knapsack that looks like it is from WWI. He never speaks, but looks very depressed. I hope he is happy in his life outside of the bus. Here is a picture of Gallagher that is most representative of the bus guy, except that this picture is smiling.

 

Believe me there are more, but there are so many of them I have to save some for later. When I have some more time, I'll tell the story of Robert.