Saturday, November 18, 2006
An Honest Mistake
I don’t get any special kick out of giving up my seat on the bus, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do. It drives me crazy to see an infirm old woman barely able to keep on her feet on a rocking, jostling ride to the Westside, with four fit young people on the bench right in front of her, none of them doing a thing to help her out. Or people who won’t get out of the way of a wheelchair, or who sit in the reserved front seats while some dude with a walker hovers next to them, too well-raised to ask for his due. Or, of course, when a heavily-pregnant woman, laden with bags, teeters on swollen ankles in a buffeting crowd that offers her no assistance, to say nothing of a place to sit down. Most of the mamzers on the bus seem to have no manners, nor decency, nor even mere inherent nobility. They just sit there selfishly working a sudoku or texting.
It’s not unusual for me to offer up my seat by hand gestures to someone several rows away, who by rights should have been offered a seat by someone much nearer. But NO. I’ve got to be the nice guy. I’ve got to make it my problem.
And yea, even such guilt-driven acts of kindness doth bear me bitter fruit: for a woman got on the bus at Masonic and I think I shouldn’t have offered her my seat. If not, it was an honest mistake, but that doesn’t’ seem to have made much of a difference. I wasn’t making someone else’s problem my own – I was creating a problem where one really didn’t exist. And here’s how:
I was sitting toward the back of the bus across from the rearmost doors. The bus pulled up at Presidio and all three sets of doors flipped open. Across from me, down on the sidewalk, framed by the stairwell, stood a really big woman. She was tall, with glossy straight hair to her lumbar and dark ink all up and down both arms. Her jewelry was simple, heavy, tribal. She wore a beautiful, brightly-colored dress with a wide, flowing drape, and she was big: like “great with child” big. The way her belly belled out from beneath her not-inconsiderable bosoms, I figured her for 8+ months. She also carried a capacious handbag, and she was having trouble finding a place to stand on the crowded bus, still stuck in the doorwell, blocking the doors from closing.
It was a no-brainer – I caught her eye, signaled her – would you care for this seat? The forcefulness of her response took me a bit aback – NO, she would not like my seat. She wasn’t rude, but she sure was firm. She’d rather stand. I let it go.
Within a few minutes she’d worked herself, with considerable strength and grace, near the very back of the bus. Another rider offered his seat to her. Again, she vigorously declined, but the dude wouldn’t take no for an answer and pretty much forced her to sit on the back bench. In ill humor, she took the seat, wedging her pendulous self between two other suddenly-crowded riders. As she sat, I noticed that her ankles and calves were remarkable: large, chunky – a big woman’s legs. A further glimpse now at her arms - enormous. Her shoulders: massive. Oh snap. That belly wasn’t any different from any other part of her. She wasn’t pregnant- she was just plain old big.
I watched her stew with the indignity of having one condition, reviled, taken for another, revered. That some other jerk had done it worse, more blatantly than I had, was no consolation to me. I’d insulted her because I’d offered her my seat because she was fat. Just to make up for it I left two guys with walkers standing in the aisle all the way downtown the next day. You’d think that it would have made me feel better, but it really didn’t very much.
