Hello anyone reading this!
To give you some background, I recently started riding the Cleveland RTA buses regularly in order to comute from Cleveland Heights to downtown Cleveland for school. At least once a week, I would come home with a new story about someone on the bus. The most surprising being when I had a pleasant conversation with someone who seemed kind of normal. A sad fact is that Cleveland has a lot more mental health problems than you might think. While mildly depressing, its also a bit entertaining, and a good topic to tell everyone about. As I like to think most people would do, I messed up a few times trying to maneuver bus schedules, and reading the numbers and routes and stuff, but that's boring. The story I have for you today, is how I befriended a bus person.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I got to the bus stop with about 20 minutes to spare before the bus I needed got there. About 5 minutes after I got there, a woman arrived, and talked to everyone there. She seemed to know everyone; there wasn't a single person who she didn't greet familiarly and tell them about the mundane details of her life. I started wondering: is that going to happen to me? Is this a secret bus-riding community? Is everyone that friendly? Well, this is great, I thought. If I never get a job or a car or anything, I can just join this secret club and engage in polite conversation with people who I wish were strangers... on second thought, maybe not.
One day, there was no one at the bus stop except for that lady (at that point, and for a while on, she would remain nameless) and me. Naturally, she introduced herself. Well, kind of. She lit a cigarette and said, "never get in this habit. I'm trying to stop." I politely agreed, and continued to mind my own business while avoiding breathing in as long as I could manage. That day, I learned that she was 34 years old, and was going to the College of Bryant and Stratton to get her business associate's degree. In the bus rides to follow, I would learn that she has a son, who would be turning 6 on November 19th (2011), his party would be held at Chuck E. Cheese, and I was welcome to come, and bring any younger siblings I might have (as much as I thought my 14 year old sister might enjoy herself, I decided not to attend). She sees no need to get a driver's license, as she takes the bus everywhere. She "feels more alert" when she's high (as told to me while she was high). One thing you should know: I did not ask questions. She told me all of this unsolicited information for who knows what reason.
The last thing I learned about her was that her name is Eileen. That day was an interesting one. Waiting at the first bus stop, she was incredibly talkative, friendly, in a seemingly very good mood, and of course, high. That was when she told me her name, and asked me mine. We rode the bus until the right stop, and got off to transfer to the Healthline. Everyone J-walks across Euclid. Crossing the street, she saw a police car, and commented on how we were going to get in trouble for J-walking. It was already too late to go to the crosswalk, so I kept walking. The police car pulled up in front of us and reprimanded us for it. I apologized and walked around the car. Eileen, however, said something along the lines of: well why don't you have the courtesy of not stopping in front of us?" This was one of the stupidest things I've ever heard anyone say. They asked her for ID, and she missed the bus that day.
Two things have changed since that day. I am now the only person who does not J-walk across Euclid, and Eileen hasn't made an appearance on my route, which I'm pretty much okay with.
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