last night on the bus...

Part of my new commuter experience is taking the bus from Union Station to Navy Pier. If it's a nice day, I'll sometimes walk part of this. If I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll walk the whole way. Not in this heat though.

Mostly, I take the 120 and 121 buses, which are "express" routes to and from Union and Ogilvie Stations/Navy Pier. My rides are usually pretty uneventful, since it's mainly business commuters going to and from work. Yesterday though, was kind of fun.

So I was on the 120 yesterday afternoon, on my way home. The buses sit at the depot by the Pier, and so I was just hanging out, waiting to go. The driver was on the phone, talking about some friend of hers named (I swear) Aquanetta (is it like that native American custom of naming your child after the things you see? So like Cloud Dancing or Sitting Bull? Did someone's mom use some hairspray one morning and decide it was a lovely name for a girl?). So that made me laugh.

Then, somewhere on the way to Ogilvie, this lady next to me starts talking on her phone to her friend Pam. And it's all like blah blah blah, which I kind of hate, but then it got interesting. She was saying that she had to reschedule a dinner with her "friend" Tracy, but Tracy had to cancel which was fine with lady-next-to-me because evidently, Tracy hates this lady's guts now and is saying all kinds of mean things about her. (I was sitting there thinking, oooh, like what? And then she gave details). This Tracy (apparently) sent an email to my seatmate wherein she called this lady a wino and accused her of child neglect. Who does that in an email? If you're worried about your friend having a drinking problem, wouldn't you be more gentle about it? Or, like, have an intervention?

And instead of telling her to naff off, my seatmate was talking about rescheduling this dinner with Tracy (who kind of sounded like a beeyotch to me). It was totally better than a soap opera. She would have kept talking but we entered the Loop which is kind of a dead zone.

I totally didn't want to hear any of these things, but I didn't have a book or anything, so I was kind of a captive audience to this lady and her drama. So message to all of you bus riders. If you don't want your entertaining conversations to become blog fodder for the likes of me, maybe you should keep your voice down?