Tales of Stupidity

Sit back and enjoy as I regale you with a tale rife with foolhardiness, if that indeed is a word. It passes the spell check test so it must be. Imagine, if you will, that I am on my way home after yet another long day at the office. I arrived in the bus tunnel a few minutes ahead of when the bus was scheduled to arrive, and decided that a good use of my time would be to compose an email on my fancy, brand spanking new Samsung Omnia phone. As luck would have it, I was so enthralled by my shiny new toy that apparently my bus had passed me by.

I had been looking up when buses pulled up to the stop and noted that they were not the one I was waiting for and went back to my phone. It would seem that I failed to do this on the most important bus of the day, for at some point I looked at the clock and noticed that the bus should have been by 6 or 7 minutes earlier and that there were far less people waiting than there normally would be. And since I was standing right by the curb, this meant that the bus had stopped, let people off, boarded several new passengers, and driven off a mere feet from me and yet I had not seen it.

This shouldn't be a big problem though, since this route runs every 10 or 15 minutes during peak hours, right? Well, normally that might be the case, but fate had a different plan for me. You see, another bus broke down, or had mechanical troubles or something. The point is that it sat there unmoving for a good 15-20 minutes. And the tunnel's nature, being what it is, meant that any trailing buses were unable to pass, leading to a parade of buses as far as the eye could see. This included the bus which would take me home, about 5th in line. I could see it, but since it was down the tunnel and away from the station was unable to board it, and even if I could wouldn't be making any progress.

The offending bus was finally able to move, and as the log jam broke I was able to continue on my long journey home, but not before one final joy. On the above mezzanine, looking over the tunnel, an agitated man was leaning over the railing shouting profanities and yelling threats at someone who I couldn't identify, and this being downtown possibly nobody. As security was dispatched to discuss his behavior with him, my curious nature told me I should wait around for a resolution to this conflict. However the logical part of my brain kicked in and told me to get on the bus and go home before it got any later. All in all, it turns out that 2 minutes of not paying attention cost me about a half hour of commute time. Hopefully this bit of stupidity will not be repeated.