I was on the bus today (which in NYC doesn’t necessarily mean you’re weird, a student, or impoverished as it does in, say, Los Angeles, although it might) and an elderly woman got on. She was clear-eyed with wiry gray hair, and wearing a black coat and Reebok running shoes. Like everyone else shuffling through the bus toward the back, she struggled with her stuff, a faux Coach purse and a Trader Joe’s shopping bag. Eventually, with much effort, she plopped the shopping bag down at my feet and and grabbed the pole for stability.
I was about to offer her my seat, when the young woman directly across from me did. You’d have thought she offered to wrest power of attorney from the woman’s children and then poison her in her sleep.
“NO!” the old woman snapped, and turned back around so she was facing me. “No thank YOU!” Unlike the young woman who had offered her seat, I could see her face, which was deeply perturbed. Her lashless eyes rolled upward and her mouth hung open in disgust. She let out an irritated New York City sigh.
OK, so clearly not a nice woman. But she didn’t seem disturbed, either. She wasn’t wearing an entire cake of blush and one false eyelash and a sparkly beret, like one woman in my neighborhood who likes to comment unfavorably on people’s parenting skills. OK, my parenting skills.
I was too scared of the bus lady to ask, but I wonder if her reaction was similar to mine that time I was offered a seat on the subway. I assumed the man who offered it thought I was pregnant and I was briefly offended, because I wasn’t and that meant I merely looked pregnant. Basically, the woman who offered her seat–obviously meant to be kind and perhaps as a sign of respect–was saying, “Take a load off, you obviously feeble creature with one foot in the grave.”
I can see why the old woman got grumpy. I guess if you’re in the wrong mood, inclined to take something in the worst possible way, you’re not gonna take kindly to someone saying you look old, no matter how polite and well-intentioned a package it is.
Then again, I’m tired, and I’m just 43. If the current trajectory of tired continues until I’m as old as that woman, I’m taking the seat and saying thank you in a non-sarcastic way. But that’s just me.
November 20, 2010 at 7:13 am
Awwww. . . Stephanie please don’t disparage public transportation or the people who take it. I’ve been working hard with my little girl to get her comfortably taking the city bus and, gosh darnit, I’d be really upset if people started thinking about her as “weird” for riding the bus (although in her case she fits nicely into the “student” category).
Public transportation is vitally important to our cities and also to tackling global warming.
I live in the Twin Cities and very slowly more and more people are starting to explore public transit as an option. A choice that is good for community and good for air quality.
The only reason I don’t hop on the bus more frequently is that I never seem to have enough time to make it work.
But then, I guess I’m the first to admit that I am and always have been a little weird.
November 20, 2010 at 7:26 am
I love public transportation. I’m just pointing out that on car culture, people are considered odd if they take the bus. Not so in NYC. I wish more of the country were like NYC in that way. I can barely drive which is considered weird most everywhere, but Thank goodness not here.
November 20, 2010 at 8:43 am
Sarah- Public transportation is how we (Stephanie & I) got to High School. Good for you for working to get your daughter comfortable with it. I started taking the city bus to school when I was in the 3rd grade, (In N.Y.C.) & I think what you’re doing is great. Stephanie wasn’t disparaging public transportation, just airing a (false) perception of it. In Boulder, CO when you get on a city bus, you see a great variety of humanity, which I find refreshing.
November 22, 2010 at 10:17 pm
“the current trajectory of tired…” LOL
what if the “poor old lady” was only 50?!
November 25, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Oh heck, if someone offers me a seat I don’t care why, I’ll take it.
But if he calls me “ma’am” I might stub him with one of my stilettos.
December 2, 2010 at 12:14 pm
It’s all in perspective, I guess. The little old lady may not have been that old. All that aside, I applaud the young lady who offered her seat. And young men who hold a door open for me or anyone else. I always appreciate it when that happens. I like to think my sons have that same good upbringing. And we just recently got bus service to my small town and it’s being embraced by all alike. YAY.