One day he got off at my stop and struck up a conversation. Turns out he had been parking near my stop for a few days hoping to catch the same bus home and ask me out. He was concerned it would seem weird if he got off at my stop to ask me out, so he consulted a few friends. One in particular told him he had nothing to lose and to just go for it.

When I called my friend to tell him my “bus hottie” had asked me out, it slowly dawned on him that he knew both of us and we had been talking to him about each other–he was the guy who had told my husband to go for it.

Two years after our first bus stop conversation, we got on another city bus that took us to that same stop. My husband retold all the moments of our first meeting and ending by proposing. At our wedding reception we assigned all of our tables with names of stops along the route and we sat at a table labeled Route 134. Five and half years later, we still love to tell our bus story!

Which is where this story starts. I was riding along next to my wife and the guy sitting behind me taps me on the shoulder. He has to do it twice because I sort of didn’t notice at first and I was also just ignoring him because I’m not much of a bus talker. Anyway, I turn around and he’s holding out a Chapstick. I’m thinking, “Gross, I don’t want your nasty Chapstick, what’s the deal?” But before I can blurt it out though, he says, “you dropped this.” so, I end up feeling kind of like an idiot but just thank him, use the Chapstick and put it back in my pocket.

If that were the end, it’d be just another case where I jumped to the wrong conclusion and came close to sounding like a jerk. But its not the end. Later in the day, my lips were feeling a bit chapped again so I went in my pocket to retrieve my returned Chapstick and I found two tubes of it in my pocket. I had used some random person’s tube that morning.

I threw them both away. Ick.

9 times out of 10, if i am running towards the stop (sometimes i’m just a tad behind getting to work in the a.m.), the bus driver will actually stop mid-block to let me on! Had that been chicago, i would have wound up waiting for the next bus.

Coming back home from downtown, i was still trying to figure out when to pay (getting ON the bus or when i get OFF the bus) how much (when DID the rush hour fare stop and the regular fare kick in?), etc. I got off my stop and realized that i had been charged rush hour fare even though it was well after. “ah well” i thought. “public trans is public trans no matter where you are.” The next evening i was on the same bus and as i went to slide my payment card into the pay box, the driver put his hand over it and said “i remember you from last night and i accidentally didn’t change the rush hour fare reading, so this ride is on us.”

I walked home in a minor stupor, called friends back in chicago with a “nyah nyah nyah” attitude and regaled them with these stories. while some of the tales i’ve read here remind me of chi-town, i’m still in pleasant amazement over the level of service and decency when using MT.