BUS STORY # 438 (Messed Up)

Photo by Busboy

The driver recognizes the guy who’s just boarded.

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Yeah, but I gotta go to court this morning. I got a DWI.”

The driver groans. The rider asks him to let him know when the Second Street stop is.

“You want before or after I turn the corner?”

“After. It’s closer.”

The rider takes a seat in the first row behind the bench seat on the passenger side.

There is a pause, then the driver calls back, “So what were you doin’ drivin’ DWI, bro?” There’s a softening in his voice, a tone that says he isn’t just shooting the breeze but he isn’t wanting to push any buttons.

The story is complicated in the rider’s telling, but it comes down to his leaving a restaurant thinking he was sober enough to drive. He explains when he pulled onto the street, the cops were right there. It was as if they were waiting for him, he says.

He goes on to say he made things worse by demanding a blood test. He said not only did they refuse, but “they slapped me with an aggravated.”

I am confused. My understanding is an aggravated DWI comes with a driver’s refusal to take a test. Perhaps I misheard...

The rider goes on to say he should have just “bit the bullet” because now he can’t drive and he has to work and the whole thing has just messed up his life.

I was listening to that last as the bus pulled into my stop. If the driver had a response, I was already out the back door and missed it.

But I couldn’t help thinking about how this DWI had “messed up” his life. He could have injured or killed somebody, including himself. I wonder if he has any sense at all of just how much more “messed up” his life could have been.