Riding the Bus With Scarlett O'Hara

Everyone rides the bus sometime, a school bus, a tour bus, a city bus or a Greyhound bus.  The bus is the ultimate road trip, where people can read, watch the scenery go by, sleep, even pace the aisle -- something impossible to do in a car.  When the bus stops, there’s a museum, a factory, a vacation, or home.  The afternoon commute from work or school is crowded and loud and absolutely fascinating.

            In the classic movie Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara sits on the lawn at Twelve Oaks, surrounded by admiring, fawning boys, vying for her attention and favor.  Scarlett laughs and flirts, smiles and pouts, and the boys are anxiously trying to be more charming, more gallant, and more suave than their peers.  There is a girl in the back of the bus today who must have been Scarlett in a past life: boys surround her, competing for a smile or compliment from her.  She isn’t particularly pretty, but none of the boys seem to notice.  She laughs at their lame jokes, compliments their silly t-shirts, and bestows a touch of her fingers on the truly lucky ones.  Is she deliberately holding them captive, or is she genuinely interested in everything they say?

            Three generations of women sit in the front seats.  The youngest, barely out of babyhood, is proudly wearing a sparkly plastic tiara.  “It’s my birthday,” she announces to the other passengers, and is rewarded with smiles and birthday wishes.  She is trying to sit still with her mother and grandmother, but she is excited.  She bounces in her seat, jumps up and twirls in her pink skirt, and takes a hopping step before a tap from her mother reminds her to sit still on the seat and stop bothering people.  When she sits again, her feet stick straight out in front of her, and she grins at her pretty shoes.

            A student with long hair slouches down the aisle to the back of the bus.  His gait is uneven from the heavy backpack slung over one shoulder.  Another student swaggers, seeming to occupy more space than needed for his lanky frame.  He has perfected the art of being cool, and his heavy books do not change his confident stare or his shoulder-swinging stride.  Tripping over his untied shoelace, however, does change his stare, and he sits suddenly, several rows in front of Scarlett O’Hara.

            The bus driver is a tiny woman.  She has raised the hydraulic driver’s seat as high as it will go, and her arms are stretched out to hold either side of the steering wheel.  Her uniform is crisp, her shoes are polished, her makeup is perfect, her hair is perfectly coifed, and her earrings don’t match.  One is a silver hoop, one is a dangling circle.  If she could see her reflection in the mirrors, she would stick them in her pockets and pretend her ears were not pierced.  She is comfortable in her sheltered bus seat, separated but not isolated from the general passengers.

            I am pretending to read a novel.  It’s not a very good novel, and it does not hold my attention.  With all the human drama and comedy and tragedy there is to see on the bus, I do not want to read, anyway.  I watch people get on and off the city bus for 36 blocks, watching moments of their lives played out on public transportation, and then Scarlett and I get off at the same stop, going separate ways to our separate lives.