Sunday, July 22, 2007

Stories From The Bus

This story starts on my bus ride home from work on Thursday. I was on the 245, about a mile from home when one of the passengers got up and started acting a little strange. He started pulling on his jacket sleeves, and from there moved down to the bottom of his jacket and started twisting it from side to side, all the while looking around the bus with a very confused look on his face. From there he moved about halfway to the back of the bus, grabbed the top of one of the seats and started pulling back and forth on it. By this time, the driver had stopped the bus and was trying to talk to him. The driver kept asking him if he was ok, or if he needed any help. The guy didn't seem to notice the driver was there and kept pulling on the seat while making incoherent sounds. The driver got on his radio and called for help, and the guy moved back to the front of the bus and started slapping his hands together like he was trying to dust them off. The driver again tried to talk to him, but still got no response.

Well, this went on for I would guess between 2 and 3 minutes and then the guy kind of snapped out of it and went right back to acting normal. He didn't even seem to realize that any of this had been going on. It was almost like he had been blacked out the whole time. As it turns out, he was having an epileptic seizure. He said he has been having 2 or 3 of them a week since he was 6 years old and that he was fine. I was relieved to find out he was ok, but since the driver had called for help, the bus had to sit there and wait for an aid car to show up and check him out before they could go on, and so I hopped on the next bus going by and headed for home.

What I really couldn't believe about all this though was that about halfway through the seizure, some jackass in the back of the bus actually said, "just kick him off the bus and let's get going." It just blows my mind that someone could see someone having what seemed to be a serious problem and all he could care about was that it was a minor inconvenience to him and wanted to just leave him on the side of the road. Unbelievable. I'm sure that guy must have been a Democrat. Ok, that was uncalled for and just kind of slipped out.

Ah, the joys of public transportation. I was about to say never a dull moment, but in fact there are a lot of dull moments, but occasionally those dull moments are interrupted by something very unusual.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is pretty freaky. Glad to hear the guy was okay as it turned out fine.

You do seem to have some strange stories about public transportation. I am glad however a guy who has two or three epileptic seizure per week does take public transportation instead of driving though...

Shawn said...

Actually I agree with the notion that these people need to be just kicked off the bus. In that situation I can guarantee you that I would have been convinced he was overdosing on meth or something. When the jibberish started I would have asked the driver to open the door and I would have helped him throw him out. I am completely desensitized by all the weird behavior I've witnessed on the bus, and no long have time for people and their f**king "issues". That's what harborview is for.
Shelvis