BUS STORY # 354 (Catching Up)

Waiting for the Bus..., a photo by Moliniano on Flickr.

The driver is lowering the wheelchair lift on one of the old 300s. I didn’t see anyone in a wheelchair at the stop, but when the lift delivers an old man with a walker, I understand.

He’s surely in his 70s. He’s wearing shorts that display swollen knock knees. He moves slowly to the bench seat, turns around, and starts to lower himself to the seat.

His knees won’t really bend, so he is sliding down the back of the seat until his knees just give out, and he drops into the seat with a quiet “Oof!” He pulls his walker close and settles in.

Across the aisle and three rows back, another rider calls out.

“Charlie,* is that you?”

“Hey, how you doin’, man?”

They talk a bit. Charlie tells him about his knees.

“Gonna have an operation in October, and then I’ll be all right.”

The other guy asks about Trey.*

“Oh, he’s still in. You know he went in the same time I got out.”

The other rider asks Charlie how long he’s been out now.

“Six months.”

He goes on to explain he put on 20 pounds this last time, and it’s been hard trying to take it back off.

“How’s Henrietta?”*

“She’s on her own, now.”

“You by yourself, then?”

“Yeah. She just wouldn’t give up her addiction.”

There is more conversation. The rider asks about someone else, and Charlie says he hasn’t seen him.

“Been some changes. You know Clifford’s* gone. And Tom’s* in a nursing home now. But he’s doin’ good, doin’ good.”

They remember some other folks from “back in the day.”

They are still catching up when I get off at Central.

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*Real name changed.

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Thanks to Rachel in San Francisco for this week’s Holy Cow! featured link.