Fun, or Wah?

There are only two types of trips on my regular chinatown bus from the LES to South Station: very good, and very bad. This weekend, I had both.

Wah: On my return to the city last night on the 10pm (arrives at Canal St. 2:20am), around midnight I came a heartbeat away from waiting for a quiet moment, whipping out my cellphone, poke-dialing my friend Matt and projecting extremely loudly into the receiver "Hey, Matt guess what? You're right about cell phones on buses being annoying. I think that everybody who has an song-jingle ring or talks for too long should be dragged into the back and had their head flushed in the toilet. I'm on a bus about half-full of people who have no idea that everybody else can hear them, and when their "Ode to Joy" ring goes off for the 20th time, the quiet passengers want to stuff them in the luggage compartment down below. Yeah, seriously. They have no idea, it's hilarious. Anyway, see you. Peace." The smattering of applause would have been priceless. I'm not in any way a thin-skinned guy and I know what sort of clientele to expect with a $10 ticket, but were are some basic human courtesy laws being flouted on that run. Like when the hipster band kid next to me left a 5 minute+ message for some guys he tried out with, only to realize at the end of said message that in passing under the Prudential Building tunnel he had lost his signal at some point and then left the same word-for-word message for them all over again? Poor etiquette. Lady sitting behind you taps you awake an hour into the ride to ask if your overhead light is working (hers seems to be broken), apparently not noticing that every single light in the entire capacity-filled bus has mysteriously been off the whole ride? Poor etiquette. When the fat sweaty passenger in the back walked to the front to complain to the driver the AC wasn't turned high enough for him, only in putting his hand on every headrest he passed managed to stick one of his greasy sausage fingers in my sleeping ear? Poor etiquette. It was almost like I was paying for something in karma...

Fun: For the ride up to Boston, I planned on meeting a friend in the line for the Fung Wah directly after work. Being a Wall St. worker bee, I was much closer and arrived first. In line to buy tickets, my attention was naturally drawn to the tall blonde girl alone behind me; a recurring theme is how much of a sucker I am in that department. However, by the time I had run to a cash machine and returned, my friend had arrived and the bald passenger behind her had struck up the Interest in conversation. Friend, who is renowned for a complete lack of social and spatial awareness, proceeds to conversationally recount in his patented volume several weekends' worth of our social group's chicanery, blissfully unaware of my attempts to steer the conversation onto a more tasteful or even intelligent tack. Finally, when I mentioned soreness from the Chase Corporate Challenge 5k I had run earlier, Interest seized upon a moment of silence from her suitor and chimed in mentioning she had run it, as well. A quick trip for a hot dog later, I informed blissful friend that the two behind us were not, as he thought, together, and that I would have her contact info by the end of the ride (blissful friend seemed dubious.) 5 hours and 1 Fung Wah ride later, I rose, stepped back to where Interest was sitting with suitor next to her, engaged in a brief conversation during the shuffle to exit the bus, and left set with a get-together planned at Niagara this week. In the words of blissful friend, suitor looked on the verge of tears, as he appeared "ready to propose marriage when I busted up his game." Right-place-at-the-right-time-to-provide-a-desperately-needed-out luck it may be, but it's stories like this that put the fun in fung wah.