A Series of Unfortunate Events - Bus Edition

We all know how the saying goes that bad things happen in threes right?

So, here I am again, leaving you all with another wacky bus adventure that depicts the above expression quite comically if I do say so myself. Now I wasn’t planning to have one written up so quickly after the last one – but I guess when a spontaneous opportunity presents itself like a shiny Pokémon in the tall grass…one must get to work writing about it (one being me of course.)

So here I am to present a short (hopefully) story on what happened a few weeks back on my MVP - bus no.25. Honestly it felt like it happened just yesterday, and I had been meaning to write about it earlier, but time has absolutely escaped me faster than my cat does when it’s time for food. Anyways - August is here, the year’s gone fast. You get the point. Back to the story.

So it was nearing the end of the semester, which means the buses generally become less crowded or at least less student-infested. It’s a wonderful time for me honestly. I don’t know what it is about students maximizing my anxiety on the bus but if you’re a loyal reader and have read every one of these blogs up until this point – you’ll most certainly understand that when it comes to my bus trauma, it more than likely involves or at least surrounds school students. I don’t even want to talk about the one bus I take to school that happens to have an all-boys high school situated opposite the bus stop I get off at. God was truly testing my patience when he decided to throw me into the deep-end, having to interact and co-exist with the age range of sixteen to eighteen year old boys whereby having to jump out of the window of a moving car seems all that more appealing.

No, don’t worry – I don’t hate boys and Yes – I am being dramatic, but honestly there’s a certain discomfort you just can’t help but feel when a hoard of teenage boys who speak a completely different language hover around in various spaces, that unfortunately I personally just can’t seem to escape. Then when it comes to getting on the same bus as them, I feel like I’m in the middle of ‘300’ the movie as everyone battles to the death to try and get on first. Seriously.

Okay, so back to lovely bus no.25 that for the most part, is warzone free. Sometimes I’ll get the occasional influx of students but never to the extent of some of the other buses I can take to and from work. So, I was on the way home from work one day. The bus was relatively empty, peaceful and the temperature of the aircon was also just right. I was even optimistic that I was going to make it home a little earlier that day. All was going well and there I was in my mind doing a little happy do-doo-do-doo in my head jingle jangle as the day was ending off close to being a ten out of ten. Now the situation I’m going to proceed to tell you about isn’t even bad and thankfully, I escaped trauma this time. It was more-so a very unique occurrence that I don’t think many people can say they’ve witnessed before – so here I am to share it with you.

Before I continue, I want you to know that there are selected seats on the bus designated for a certain group of people - such as senior citizens, pregnant women and wheelchair folk. Now seeing someone in a wheelchair ride the bus is not very common at all. In my ‘just over three years’ of being here, I’ve only witnessed it perhaps twice and it’s because my one school I worked at happened to be close to a rehabilitation center. Apart from that, I only ever see literally anyone else sitting in those seats. (But of course they would move should they need it for an actual disabled person.) Heck, even I sometimes sit in those seats – but recently I realised I must’ve accidentally pushed the button that sits a lot further down for a wheelchair person to reach because it made a very distinct sound and I instantly panicked because I could have sworn I didn’t even touch it. Luckily the bus driver didn’t say anything and he obviously knew there wasn’t anyone in a wheelchair currently riding the bus that needed to get off. I was really embarrassed after that, but thankfully a few days later the same thing happened to someone else and I figured those buttons must be really sensitive or they’re broken and go off when they please. Since then, I try and avoid those seats in fear of accidentally pressing the button and in even greater fear of the bus driver flinging me out of the window as if I was a frisbee. (Irrational? Yes. Possible? Perhaps.)

This isn’t the story I wanted to share with you though, but I did want to give you some background information on the wheelchair seats. Apart from the positioning of the button, the seats also fold toward the side to make space for the wheelchair user and the bus driver usually gets out the bus and assists the person to help them get on safely. Most of the time, you’re supposed to enter at the front door and exist from the middle door, but for a wheelchair user, a ramp extends out from the middle door, and they can be wheeled up and into the bus. Not all busses have this accessibility but of course angel baby MVP no. 25 does. The process usually also takes a few minutes – but of course everyone is patient and understanding. Well, here’s hoping.

Okay, so on this day as we were passing by the City Hall bus stop, you can imagine my utter surprise and amazement to see not one but TWO wheelchair users waiting for the bus!

There’s an allocated waiting space for them so that they bus driver knows if they need to get on. Luckily, they had someone waiting with them, who happened to be assisting them so the bus driver wasn’t alone in this mission.

First thing’s first – he had to stop the bus (duh) and open the middle exit door. Easy enough. Second thing he had to do was lower the ramp…

lower the ramp.

I said lower the ramp dear sir.

Oh-oh.

The ramp appeared to be stuck because it wasn’t lowering. Eventually the bus driver had to get up and go manually kick that ramp like his job depended on it. Did it? I don’t know but he was definitely kicking it with a certain level of purpose and passion. Gotta admire the hustle to get on with his job.

Unfortunately the ramp won that round and every round after that where he’d try kicking it again and again….and again. Okay, after about eight minutes at the bus stop watching the bus driver MMA fight this poor ramp while we all awkwardly watched as the wheelchair users baked outside in the hot sun, he eventually told their helper that the ramp wasn’t going to work and they had to wait for the next bus. A sad day for bus no.25….*sigh*

Okay, it was time to keep going then. I gave up my hopes on getting home earlier – that clearly wasn’t going to happen now, but I really didn’t mind. I was just relieved that the awkwardness of the situation would now dissolve a bit. Seriously I could practically see the bated breaths of all the other passengers (me included to be honest).

When the bus driver got back into his seat, he tried closing the exit door so he could keep driving.

Oh no.

Good ol’ Murphy's Law decided to work hard that day it would appear because now the door wouldn’t close. He tried and tried again. He got up even and I thought he was going to start beefing it out with the door this time, but he simply tried releasing the air or whatever it is they do when they twist the weird red dial above the door. Did that work?

No.

Eventually after another few minutes, he turned off the bus. The door finally managed to close.

Mission succeeded! (Hands up)

He tried turning the bus back on….it wouldn’t turn on…

Mission failed. (Head down in depair)

The ride of emotions that bus driver must’ve gone through at that moment. I think every part of his patience was being tested because he truly managed to not crack like an egg under the pressure. I knew if it were me, I’d cut my losses, throw myself off that bus and you’d never see me again. I’d change my name and move to a small island somewhere off the coast of ‘Come Here If You Want To Disappear’.

Not him.

He stuck it out and showed Murphy’s Law just who’s boss.  He eventually got the bus to turn back and finally – off we went into the sunset…living happily ever after. I’m just kidding. But I’m pretty sure we were all happy.

I couldn’t believe the luck of what started out being a ramp that wouldn’t go down, which turned into the door not being able to close, to eventually being a problem of the bus just not working at all. At some point I thought we were going to be told to get off because I genuinely thought that the bus had broke. That, or it decided on early retirement. It was clearly tired that day and feeling underappreciated.

All in all, we got through it. I didn’t get to add to my tally of how many wheelchair users I’ve seen on the bus – but I did get to experience a series of unfortunate events that ended up fortunately being solved. I will say this taught me the good life lesson of just how quick we are sometimes to jump to the worst case in certain situations that don’t always go as we planned them. I was fully prepared to watch an angry bus driver in action, to have to get off the bus, or just die there from sheer suspense of “what’s going to happen?” However, before I knew it, we were back on the road, and it was as if it never happened. Usually, these ‘life problems’ I tend to worry about have a funny way of becoming okay again – which inevitably leads to me laughing about how silly and irrational I was about them at the time. (Or at least in this case writing about them). I guess it’s not so easy to be rational in the moment, but the bus driver taught me that patience and sheer willpower gets you through a lot, and like me and the rest of the passengers, sometimes you just have to wait it out too – as crappy as it may be at the time, it’ll be okay and we’ll all be on our merry way, riding into the sunset…

…eventually.

P.S. – It was not short. I apologise. I clearly have the inability to make things short when I always have so much to say. I also feel that this entry didn’t flow quite as well as I wanted it to and the writing is a bit careless, but I suppose they won’t all come out as planned…and I guess that’s okay too.

Until the next stop,

Bus Blog Driver Tay