BUS STORY # 198 (“Back Door!”)

Touch Here To Open Door, originally uploaded by busboy4.

I board the 11 on my way home. Moving up the aisle, I spot a familiar face and head for the platform at the rear of the bus. 

Frank* is a committed regular, although more often than not we are taking different routes or are on different schedules. 

On those occasions when we have ridden together, I’ve found Frank to be impressively well-informed about local politics in general, and public transportation (and ABQ RIDE) in particular. 

We’re just getting started on our small talk when the bus makes a stop. Shortly afterwards, we hear “Back door!” from a rider trying to exit the rear door. 

The driver tells him to push on the yellow strip. He pushes a couple of times before the door opens. 

We continue to the next stop when I am again distracted by someone calling out “Back door.” 

The driver calls back for him to push. He does. Nothing happens. 

The driver tells him to run his hand down the yellow strip. He does. The door opens. 

I look at the bus number. 980 – one of the newest buses. 

I can’t believe a 900 bus is already having problems with the back door. 

Frank tells me it’s not the bus. 

He explains he’s had this driver several times now over the last couple of months, and he plays this game with the riders every time. 

I’m flabbergasted. 

I didn’t recognize the driver when I got on, but this is a later bus than the one I usually catch. I look frontward and see his face in the mirror. He's an older guy, doughy-faced, with round, bluish-tinted glasses. 

At the next stop, we watch a mom and her young daughter at the back door. They push once, and after a slight pause, the door opens. 

Frank considers that a pass. 

From then on, we’re as attentive as bird watchers. The magic trick for opening the back door varies. Sometimes he tells the rider to push harder, sometimes to push elsewhere on the strip, sometimes to slide a hand up and down the yellow strip, sometimes to slide a hand between the yellow strips. And sometimes it’s various combinations of these maneuvers. 

I pick up a pattern: he’s easier on the women than he is on the men. Frank tells me there’s one rider who gets off at Wyoming who won’t play the game. He just stands there and keeps shouting “Back door!” until the driver opens the door. 

We wonder what in the world would drive a person to behave in this fashion. Some kind of serious anger and control issues, we speculate. And my mind’s ear is suddenly listening to a fragment of Pink Floyd’s "Another Brick in the Wall," about some abusive boarding school teachers:

But in the town it was well known When they got home at night Their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them Within inches of their lives

When we approach Frank’s stop, he says “We’ll see what happens.” 

Frank has to push on the yellow strip a couple of times before the door opens. 

I finish the ride to my stop wondering how I’m going to handle myself when I try and exit. Should I play the game? Follow the Wyoming rider’s example and not play? Walk all the way to the front door and avoid the whole thing? 

I pull the cord, wait for the bus to stop, and, yielding to curiosity, go to the rear door. I push once against the yellow strip, right where it says “Touch here to open door.” 

Nothing happens. 

I stand there. 

The driver tells me to run my hand down the middle between the two doors. My fingers find a groove and run downward. 

The door opens, and I exit. 

I’m walking down the sidewalk toward home, thinking about what this driver is doing, and suddenly, I burst out laughing. For whatever reason, I’ve ended up finding this whole business absurdly, laugh-out-loud funny rather than anger-making, and I am surprised. 

I’m surprised because I would have predicted the anger, not the laughter. I may be a long way from compassion here, but I’m pleased to somehow have managed to distance myself from the other, angry end of the spectrum. 

And while I really have no idea what is behind the bus driver’s displaced anger, I consider the possibility that part of the reason I haven’t reacted in anger is because I’m on my way home to a very different kind of wife. 

__________ 

*Real name changed.