My System For Riding The Bus

I like to have systems for certain things. Not important things, like going to the store or paying my bills or remembering to get my oil changed…things where it would be \\helpful\\ to have a system…but mostly things like which order the eight or nine blankets on my bed go in, or the method with which I check my various emails and voicemails and regular mails when I get into work in the morning.

So naturally I have a couple of systems in place for riding the bus. The first and most important system…I don’t know, can you even call this a system?…is to be armed with both a book and the iPod. I can’t usually listen to music with headphones and read at the same, for some odd reason, so I have to choose. Every morning I assess the situation, I furrow my brown, I make the call, I either open the book or plug in the earbud things, I get on the bus and then get off, and the first victory of the day is accomplished, just like that. It is satisfying to have a little flexibility in those ten minutes, you know, like if I don’t like the chapter I happen to be reading I can still deflect the advances of the hygiene-impaired or the socially obtuse or the just plain unmedicated by the power of the white wires snaking down my front into my jacket pocket. I find this comforting.

Of course, all systems fail occasionally and I do have those times where I plumb forget either my book or the iPod. This morning was one of those times. I woke up late and spent fifteen minutes in bed whispering sweet nothings to my purple flannel sheets, promising them I’d be home soon and that we’ll be together forever and that I’d bring them home something pretty tonight after work. And then I couldn’t find my breakfast, and then I couldn’t find my keys, and I had a book ready to go but it turns out I left it on the coffee table on the way out the door but I didn’t realize that until I was a block away and I was already late so I had to just go on to the bus stop and then I was sort of pawing around in my bag for the iPod and at first all I could find were the earbud things and then I was going to be very unhappy with my commuting system because, hello, earbud things without the actual iPod are useless and then I began to wonder where I’d left the actual iPod and I didn’t see it in my bag and I wondered if I’d left it on the floor of my room but then, whew! it was just in another section of my bag so I was okay. Except that my normal system, my two-pronged approach to riding the bus, was compromised by fifty percent.

On the days I forget the iPod it’s usually all right, depending on how many pages I have left in whatever book I’m reading. It can get ugly if I finish the book before the bus comes, but occasionally I’ll throw The Stranger into the breach and Last Days and Savage Love will hold me until my stop. I won’t discuss the times I am without both book and iPod and also without auxiliary reading material because I fear to damage the image you have, somewhere in your head I’m sure, of me as being kind and sweet and gentle and good. Let’s say no more about it.

Anyway, when it’s an Only iPod Day, I have to use a special system to make sure that no one bothers me on the bus. It’s a little risky, but it totally works. The system is this: Pretend That You Are Starring In An Imaginary Private Music Video.

(By the way, I have to admit I don’t really know what’s going on in music videos these days…and by “these days,” of course, I mean, “since 1991.” I remember the Freedom ‘90 thing because I loved that song and because, you know, supermodels, and then I think I remember something about how Alanis is in the car and then all of a sudden there’s another Alanis and she’s wearing a hat. And there’s also something I seem to recall about Missy Elliot wearing a puffy silver suit and she dances around. I think. So you have to keep this in mind when I tell you about pretending you are starring in your own imaginary private music video, that the imaginary private music video in which I star may be completely different from the one in your head and maybe neither of our videos would even make it onto MTV. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, as it’s the system that counts.)

So here’s how it works: I choose, usually, a playlist I have called “Journal Writing Music” which is rather…broody, I guess. And I sit by the window…that part is important to the system…and I pretend that all of a sudden the world has gone grainy black and white, and that there is a camera right outside my window, shooting a music video. I make sure to move my head around a lot, but just slightly, you know. Like I let the early rays of sunlight touch my upturned cheekbone for a minute, and then I close my eyes very slowly and I let the camera do a closeup on my individual eyelashes, and then I open my eyes again and heave a little sigh. Sometimes I turn my head real quick as if someone has unexpectedly said my name, and then I roll my eyes a little, as if I’m adorably embarrassed with myself, like, oh, ha HA, I thought someone said my name! Ha! On the bus! Imagine that! And then I do this thing where I raise my eyebrows a little and then make a little moue with my mouth and then smile secretly to myself, all the while looking in the general direction of the (imaginary) camera outside the bus window that is shooting the imaginary private music video.

That’s all. You just move your head around a lot and pretend there’s a camera on you, only you also have to pretend that you don’t know there’s a camera on you, that you are simply a girl getting on the bus with perfect bone structure and artfully tousled hair, a girl who will be forever associated with whatever song is playing on your iPod during your commute, a girl who closes her perfect eyes luxuriously, right there on the bus. It’s so easy. You keep your pubic bone completely hidden from view. You don’t have to roll around on the floor using your bus pass as a microphone. You don’t have to be prepared with a forty every morning to pour on the head of the bus driver. All you do is look out the window.

This system works pretty well with almost any broody song ( but do NOT try this with New Wave). You can repeat the steps in any order and as needed, although I definitely recommend doing the raise-eybrows-and-make-moue thing at least a couple of times. That looks so good on grainy black and white film, you know? The real kicker, though, is that while it doesn’t attract too much attention…because who cares if you’re opening and closing your eyes a lot, listening to your iPod on the bus…but it makes it very clear to anyone who might want to start an uninvited conversation that you are in very very close contact with the voices in your head. That’s the key, you see, to the system: convincing people that you are crazier than they are and that they would do well to steer clear of you.

Oh, y’all. I know. I know I’m ridiculous.