The first smelly bus ride of the summer

My earliest memory of traveling by public transport involves a train, my Mum and a segment of cheese. The train was just the background to the soft sweet cheese segment Mum gave me for a snack, which is the reason I even remember being on a train when I was three years old. 

The first time I caught public transport by myself I was five years old.  I sat right down the back and when the school bus monitor, one of the older boys, told me I had to get out of my seat because it was for someone else I sat there frozen just staring at him.  Then two older girls sat down next to me, told him to go away and chatted and plaited my hair until they got off at their stop.  Then I was on my own, and too small to squeeze between all the people standing up to get to the exit, and the bus pulled away from my stop and drove all the way down the road before someone took pity on me and took me to the bus-driver who dropped me off outside my house on the way back.

On Tuesday I caught the bus to work with Eddie. He didn’t give me a cheese segment and I didn’t get caught up the back of the bus unable to get out. This time the bus was old, hot without air-conditioning, and not going fast enough to get air rushing in the windows.  We sat in our seats, and I read my book while more and more people hopped on at each stop, and I tried not to breath too deeply because someone who got on the bus had run out of deodorant… someone always runs out of deodorant… and eventually I had to turn to Eddie and he turned to me and we screwed up our noses, grimaced, and made discreet “ew” noises.

Half an hour later we made it to the city where we got off the bus and breathed in deep breaths of the polluted city air, which smelled so good after surviving our first smelly bus ride of the summer.