After the M60 bus pulled away from the stop outside Columbia’s gates, I settled into my seat toward the front of the cabin. Two rows of three seats face each other on the city buses, while the rest of the seats face forward in rows like the interior of an airplane.
I chose the seat I did because I was carrying two large pieces of luggage, a laptop, and a rolling suitcase. With so much to carry, I did not think I could fit into the normal bus seats and I wanted the extra aisle space in order that I not block other riders from moving toward the bus’s back. I compressed myself and my bags as much as possible into the corner of the seat, leaving about one and a half seats open to my right. The empty space was soon taken by another woman at a later stop.
This arrangement was not a problem as the bus traveled through Harlem and along 125th Street. More riders were getting on the bus at every stop, but I had oriented myself in such a way that no one was blocked from free passage down the center aisle.
Finally, right before we were about to leave Manhattan on our way to LaGuardia, the bus picked up a flood of people, including one older gentleman wearing a fedora and trenchcoat. We were so crowded that many remained standing and braced themselves with the railings and grips, just like on a busy subway car. This older man was among those who remained standing.
The bus pulled away from the stop and had been traveling for a few minutes when I started to notice that this man was grumbling and frowning at me. The muttering grew louder and more enunciated, eventually reaching full dialogue directed at me.
“You got all those bags there, takin’ up all that space. You need to move over.”
I couldn’t. There was no more chair to move over to.
“I’m sorry, sir, this is as far as I can go.”
“No, it’s not! You need to move over!”
“I’m afraid I can’t. There isn’t any more space.”
“It’s because you’ve got all them damn bags blockin’ up everything. Move over!”
What was this man’s problem? I had been as courteous as I thought possible in seating myself the way I did. Bus seats are not that big, and with the bus in motion, any further repositioning was going to be very, very difficult. But this thought-process of maximizing space utilization was apparently too time-consuming for the old man.
“Move over!” he said loudly when I did not immediately comply with his previous complaint. Other passengers were beginning to look at us. With great discomfort and struggle, I managed to compress myself a little more to the left, opening at least two feet of room on the bench.
“I have, now this is as far as I can go,” I replied, flatly. I was shocked by how aggressive this man was being toward me. It was 4:30 in the morning on a Friday – not a time I would consider particularly stressful or pressured. Before the old fart had started complaining, I was drifting in and out of a light sleep.
“You can do better. Get’yo’ bags out of the way! Blockin’ up the aisle and everything. I want to sit down! I’m 62 years old and if I want to sit down, then you damn well better let me!”
He started brushing and tapping at my bags as if threatening to move them himself. I rolled my eyes, and I felt the adrenaline beginning to pump. The confrontation had passed that critical point separating the phase where you hasten to avoid making a public display by diffusing the situation from the phase where you’re just pissed off and you’ll continue to escalate the argument because you’re tired of someone pushing you around.
“Look, there is space next to me. Sit there.”
“That’s not enough! Get’yo’self over! Put your bags under your seat, boy!”
I gave a half-hearted attempt to situate one of my bags under the seat as the old man had said. I was not about to let this man order me around.
“Are you happy? That’s as far as I can go. Now there is space next to me, so if you want to sit, do it.”
“You not listenin’ to me! You shouldn’t even be on the bus. Not with all those bags. Look at that girl!”
He motioned to a girl sitting across the aisle who had a single suitcase. Apparently, she was a model of bus passenger behavior.
“She’s not blockin’ up the whole bus like you!”
“That’s because she has only one piece of luggage.”
“Then you oughtta take a cab!”
“I will, if you pay for it.”
At this reply he became visibly madder, and he started to posture. In my mind, I affirmed to myself that I would engage him physically if he were to try to use bodily force. (This decision was a big step for me, because I am the type of person who resists any resolution involving physicality. I have never punched anyone, been punched, or participated in a fight. I cave before arguments reach the point of fights, but this man was so inexplicably hostile and unreasonable that he managed to flip some switch deep inside me.)
“Who do you think you are? With all your bags and such blockin’ up the aisles? I don’ believe it, you people all comin’ up here to New York thinkin’ you can do whatever you want. Well, you can’t!”
Yes, mister – I enrolled in college here with only the largest, most cumbersome luggage so I could board this exact bus at this time on this day just to tweak you.
“Get off it,” I told him. “Sit down or don’t, sir, but this is the best I can do.”
Why was I still calling him “sir”? Regardless, he turned around and shoved himself onto the row of seats in the gap between me and the next rider, a diminutive Asian woman. He purposely sidled up to me, causing my bags to shift and lose their tenuous arrangement on my lap.
“Stop it, sir,” I firmly said.
“No, you move your bags.”
“Whatever,” I said, sighing loudly as I ignored him.
People were still staring at us, even though the old man had sat down. I couldn’t tell whose side they were on in the argument – I scanned their faces carefully for signs of support as the bus rolled along. About the only things I did see on the other riders’ expressions were their studied attitudes of disinterest. New Yorkers have this skill down pat: a man decked out in a red cape and top hat could walk onto the bus carrying in his arms a small herd of miniature glowing elephants, but the bus riders, being true New Yorkers, would continue staring at their chosen points of focus floating somewhere in the middle distance a few feet in front of them.
The old man was not about to let this confrontation die silently, however. He continued to grumble, block after block.
“People these days, people ain’t got no manners. Ain’t s’posed to ride on a bus with all these bags here. Ain’t s’posed to take up a whole buncha seats just ’cause you don’t wanna move over.”
I grinned, knowing full well who he intended by the generic references to “people these days.” His ramblings were classic, textbook crotchety-old-manisms.
“Here I am, old as I am, and I wanna sit down. S’posed to not take up so much space. Ain’t no proper bus etiquette.”
As he sputtered this last sentence, he leaned his head toward me, presumably making sure that I could hear him. And hear I did, particularly the crisp way he enunciated the last word – “etty-quit.”
I laughed out loud. What else could I have done? He had self-destructed from a commanding stranger into a ridiculous geezer.
The old man gave my bags a couple more annoying nudges to indicate his displeasure, but the bus had stopped. Somewhere now in Jackson Heights, most of the riders were exiting and, in the process, opening up large tracts of new seating. To one of these recently emptied seats my old man haranguer shuffled away.
He did not bother me for the rest of the ride. Although we both got off the bus at the same stop at LaGuardia (and I was worried at the time we might have been looking to catch the same flight), I have no idea where he was headed nor what his purpose was for riding the bus that morning. I’m not sure who won our confrontation, either – he ultimately did not sit next to me as he had originally wanted, but not as a result of compelling reasoning or a brave display on my part. The pressure on seating space simply relaxed.
The unexpected and unprompted belligerence of this total stranger nevertheless left an impression on me. Despite having accumulated more than a year’s worth of experience living in New York City, I had never encountered the stereotypically rude resident so often portrayed in movies and television. I wondered if maybe the “nasty New Yorker” was a myth, a relic of the city’s past like peep shows in Times Square or epidemic muggings. Only when I was leaving the city – literally my last hour there – did my picture of the Big Apple enlarge to include a rotten spot.
I suppose the whole incident amounts to little more than minor tarnish in the grand scheme of things, though. 365+ days to one isn’t a bad record.
And, maybe the old man was on to something. There may be a proper “New York” bus etty-quit that I ain’t currently got, but for now those lessons will have to wait for next semester.
