I am going to heaven. The worker angels are smelting my halo as we speak. I was talked into decided to volunteer in a program to help cancer patients. A pre-requisite was to have blood work done to be certain I didn't have any illness that could further complicate the lives of these poor souls. It was downtown Brooklyn and I was taking the bus...need I say more.
I started the morning off by calling 511 the new hotline for traveling by public transportation just to find out whether or not I needed a metro card or could pay with cash. That worked about as well as my previous experiences with 311. I got their semi-automated voice recognition system....Press 1, Press 3 "let's try that again....sorry I dont understand that...goodbye!" The damn thing didn't understand my perfect English and hung up on me. I opened my snail-paced computer and went to the MTA website. Loading,...loading....loading...MTA..finally. No where, and I mean NO WHERE on that site does it say if it takes cash. It gives you 52 options regarding your metro card but nothing about cash. Throwing caution to the wind, I counted out $5.00 in quarters and fit them into the change purse in my wallet which promptly ripped open spilling quarters to the bottom of my bag. I started questioning why I was doing this all again, and then remembered that my ripped wallet wasn't anything compared to what those poor souls were going through.
I drove (yes it is only one block) and parked in a parking lot across the street from the bus stop. Pacing to keep warm, I finally saw the bus coming......and then just breeze right past me. I cursed the driver a moment and then noticed that there was no longer a bus stop sign on that corner. Apparently while I was zipping around in the comfort of my car, the MTA fairies came and wanded away this bus stop. I ran to my car and jetted past the bus that had just past me. I parked and ran (ha!) toward the bus stop and the arriving bus. I boarded and asked the driver if she took quarters. Not sure that she even answered me, I dug to the bottom of my bag and counted out 9 quarters. I ignored the one I dropped for fear of landing on my head as the driver from hell lurched back into traffic. And of course, I jammed the coin slot. At the light she banged on the box until the quarters fell in and my fare recorded.....still not acknowledging my presence other than a dirty look. I saw the Priority Seating with its bright red writing heralding that if needed you would have to get up for the elderly or disabled. Since the bus was all but empty, I sat. There are alot of reasons I do not belong on public transportation, the first being the person's ass they used as a mold for the seats is apparently way smaller than mine. I will get to the others later. As we made our way toward my final destination the bus filled up. At one point the Priority Seats were filled with the exception of me and a woman who pretended to be asleep whenever an elderly person got on. At the next stop, a man with a limp got on. The sleeper and I eyed each other in anticipation of who would give up their seat. The sleeper slept, so I stood and let him appreciatively sit. This good deed doing felt really good. As the bus emptied out stop by stop I heard the driver say that the next stop was her last, no where near where I needed to go. I asked if I had gotten on the wrong bus to which she replied...yup, not a word! (in fairness she did point to a sign that said LIMITED) I think this was payback for jamming her coin box earlier. We all exited to wait for the right bus as she begrudgingly gave us transfers.
At the bus stop, in not the best of areas, I went over a mental check list of what was in my bag in case it was torn from under my armpit. I befriended the limping man I let sit and a woman who had a walker....sadly figuring they were easier victims than me as I was pretty sure I could run faster than them. Then the right bus, sailed right by us, infuriating the limper. He raised his cane cursing the driver. (been there, done that) Some school kids (they had backpacks so I naively assumed they were students) circled around us, too close for my comfort and I foolishly made eye contact with one of them. He smiled. It wasn't that 'have a nice day' kinda smile, it was more 'i know you have a wallet that in that bag' smirk. It was the first and only time I considered risking my life and boarding a dollar van. Thankfully the bus came, the limper limped on and the students....well they never got on the bus. Perhaps they knew the wallet had a ripped zipper.
I arrived at my destination, signed in and rode the elevator up. The room, cleverly disguised on the application as a 'suite', was crowded and I had to sign in again. (I guess they didn't believe me the first time. ) As I waited to hear my name called I looked around. I think I was the only one without a facial scar. At least three women had scars straight through their eyebrows narrowly missing the eye and down the cheek. I wondered if they all pissed off the same knife wielder. And if so, hoped he wasn't in the vicinity. As our names were called one at a time we were made to line up in a narrow hallway holding an empty red folder with our name. A man dressed like a janitor instructed us to put our coats and pocketbooks in one of a wall full of lockers and secure. He said 'secure' like he knew of past problems with unsecured lockers. I only found out later that they were making sure no one brought in a 'clean' urine sample. It felt like we were being processed for prison confinement and I mentally drew the line at the strip search and lice shower. We were then handed a sealed plastic cup and dixie cup. The janitor pointed us toward the line of bathrooms and told us nothing. I guess it didn't take rocket science to figure out what to do. I could tell alot of these scarred women had done this all before and simply sat holding their cups and waiting their turn. I did the same. I wished I had my phone. My book. Anything to distract me from the fact that I felt like putting down my yellow donation cup and walking out. But then I thought of those poor souls that I was going to help....as long as I had no communicable disease. Instead I sat and wondered if anything that had crept out of someone else's coat or pocketbook was now creeping into mine in the secured locker.
I was grateful the blood work was fast but told I still had to see the doctor. The doctor turned out to be someone who looked like she stepped from a Victoria Secrets catalogue. She said we needed to do a hearing test. The hearing test consisted of her covering one ear and asking me to repeat what she whispered in my other ear. I was sure she was going to say something obscene, tear off her glasses, let down her hair and expose her catalogue body. But instead she just said CAT in my right ear and BALL in my left. My urine, blood and hearing test done I retrieved my belongings from my secured locker and left shaking my jacket. When I got outside I now began the daunting task of finding the bus stop to get me home. I asked four people. No one spoke English. I walked four blocks and found every bus stop but the one I needed. I call 511....you can well imagine how that worked out. I saw a vendor selling Super Bowl tee shirts and like a junkie buying crack we covertly exchanged money for the bag of shirts so that the NYPD didn't confiscate his bootleg merchandise or arrest me for soliciting an unlicensed product. I asked my 'dealer' if he knew where I get my bus, and he not only knew, he gave me a metro card that he said someone left on his table. I boarded my bus avoiding the NYPD, avoided a coin jam with my metro card and avoided the priority seats.
