Buseus Moodicus TERRIBILIUM

It’s not that hard to have a bad day. All you need is a work screw-up book-ended by the public transportation system’s evolutionary equivalent of the thing that crawled out of the primordial ooze. So this is my day yesterday.

I have to head out to Etobicoke early in the morning for a day on-site at a customer’s. But Pete the Car is in the body shop having this itty-bitty scratch fixed so that the goddamn lease company won’t charge me for it upon his safe return to them. The lease basically reads like this: please return car four years later exactly as you found it. Don’t drive the car in such a manner, over four years, as to receive any scratches, scrapes, key marks, stone chips, glass chips, broken mirrors, fender dents, paint marks, rust stains, upholstery tears, gravel on the floor mats, coffee stains on the cup holder, dust on the dashboard, or fingerprints ANYWHERE. I mean, just, don’t touch the car. Just look at it. For 1460 days. So when my driver’s side mirror got stolen (bastards,) the inconsiderate thieves left a wee scratch on the door that I am now being forced to have fixed. And I have no car right now. You know what this means?

It means I have to take the bus. The BUS.

Now, here’s how the food chain of commuting works. At the top of the food chain are the car commuters. They are inefficient, and often irritable bordering on ragey, but they are self-sufficient. So they are at the top. Then there are the GO-trainers, heading in from the ‘burbs at 15 minute intervals. Their trains run to an actual schedule and there is ample leg-room in the bi-level cars. So they come in second. Then there are the subway-ians, of which I am usually part. Subway-ians get to work quickly, but they do so in a sardine-crammed fashion that can make them often as irritable as the car commuters. And the subway trains arrive at shoddy, ill-planned intervals, but often enough as to calm the growing sense of universal panic. Below the subway-ian lies the streetcar-ite. The streetcars are equally as crammed as the bloody subways, but there are less places to sit, and more interval stops along the route. Streetcar-ites tend to be less hygiene conscious than subway-ians, but they still consider themselves urban and they stop at such hip places as Little Italy and my dimsum place in China Town, so we forgive them the forays into Parkedale, and Leslieville, and Cabbagetown.

And at the very bottom of the food chain: the bus. Buseus impurius antiquiorum: antiquated, slow, overcrowded and dwelling in obscure regions of the outer-city. And this is where I am, under a threatening grey sky, laptop in tow. And my laptop carrying bag, despite looking oh-so-attractive, is really not all that useful. It doesn’t have a long shoulder strap around which I can swing the computer hands-free. So instead, I have to grip the handles of the bag like a briefcase with my tiny animal paw hands. So as the bus careens around corners, it’s slip, slip, slip, re-grip, switch hands and repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And my destination office building is a good walk away from the bus stop. As I exit the bus, the wind howls and the sky opens up in full out rain, and I run, slip, slip, slip, re-grip and switch hands, all the way to cover.

Then I spend all day, isolated and alone, in a foreign boardroom, providing what we call a “support role” at the client’s for the day. The connection to my work PC is uber slow, and my cell phone daytime minutes are quickly mounting as I call in for reinforcement. I’m on the phone with head office and dude is all “What are you even doing there? Wasting the company’s time and money?” And I’m so with him on that because that’s exactly what I’m doing there. But he could, you know, pay attention to me and give me some more details so that I don’t feel quite so lost and lonely. He could pretend that we are friends and throw a joke my way instead of being all pissed off that his bloody project didn’t go quite so smoothly. It’s not my fault! And I’m stranded! Because: no car and… BUS. (buseus publica overcrowdium) But he doesn’t, because he’s in a mood that is quite matching to my own at this point. I don’t even know what irked me more – that he wouldn’t tell me all the information I needed, or that he mistook me for someone else entirely when he first answered the phone. Because I would always recognize his voice. And that’s why I don’t have the upper-hand I so desperately seek. After languishing away for six hours independently, it’s back on the bus. (buseus aromicus stinkae)

Slip, slip, slip, re-grip, switch hands. Errrrrrgh.

On the bus ride home there is a kid sitting in front of me that is maybe twenty years old. In a three piece suit. With a backpack and a goddamn iPod and sneakers. I’m thinking job interview. I bet his girlfriend thinks he cleans up nicely in a suit. But the sneakers kind of ruin it. Instead of looking all professional, he just looks like a bored kid from the suburbs in an ill-fitting suit. He actually looks like he could be the younger brother of an old roommate from Japan. He’s got the brooding eyes, and the goatee that took him six months to grow in because without it he would look like the youngest member of Menudo. And he’s even got the tweaked-out furrowed brow that Cooliam used to pull out on an exhausted Monday morning. And the kid smells like Axe body spray/eau de parfum/eau de toilette/eau de cologne. I think he’s seen the commercials that imply it makes women want to hump Axe-wearing men. But for me, all I can think about when I smell the stuff is Gay Roomie. Gay Roomie practically bathes in it. Every morning, still more than half asleep, I come tromping down the stairs from the third floor, turn the corner and run into a wall of Axe. A cloud of Axe. A stink bomb of Axe! Boom. It is intense. Does it make me wanna go after the man who ate the tequila worm that once grew in the graveyard of the man who once wore Axe while he was alive and had a heart attack while being molested by a woman overcome by that overpowering Axe aroma? Not so much. I don’t so much associate the smell with burning desire. Because: Gay Roommate.

Finally at my stop I exit the bus (buseus interruptus nonstoppium) and walk the rest of the way home dragging the trusty old laptop. In the rain. Slip, slip, slip, re-grip, switch hands. Aaaaaargh! I open the door to my apartment, contemplating my soon-to-be-entirely-car-less future. I contemplate all the car rentals, bummed rides, taxis filled with groceries, and goddamn busses in my future. Oh help and bother! And as I walk up the stairs? (One final slip, slip, slip, re-grip, switch hands.) I get hit by the roomie’s Axe-bomb.