I was on a bus not too long ago that was being driven by a fat City Bus driver during which there was a hostile confrontation between him and one of the passengers that got pretty ugly and quite personal. It made me think about the national conversation regarding political correctness and the ways people talk to each other and the names they associate with others.

I gotta be honest with you… the entertainment I derive from watching people twist themselves up in knots over how to say what’s really on their minds without hurting someone’s feelings (or getting punched in the face) knows no bounds. Given everything we know about the percentage of us that are overweight, you would think that calling someone fat would be little different than calling them brother or sister and would not be taken offense to by anyone.

Consider this story about a fat bus driver who knew it and was happy anyway and a skinny dumb-ass who thought name-calling was a smart way to get through life.

My ride down on the # 10 bus to the local discount grocery store was equally as uneventful as was my stroll up and down the aisles to gather supplies necessary to restock my pantry shelves. Sticking with my standard MO, I did my thing without looking at (or speaking to) anyone… lifting my head just enough to search for, and grab, the items I had registered in my mental list before I left the house. I was forced to speak – and act like I cared – once I got to the checkout register, of course, but it was tolerable. And although I must admit to having an incredibly long list of stories about dumb-ass cashiers I’ve come across over the years, this particular exercise in handing a total stranger money I earned in exchange for the goods in my cart that the cashier had no part in making wasn’t completely intolerable.

After paying my bill and loading everything into my backpack I went outside and waited for the outbound # 10 to pick me up for the trip back home. While I was waiting for the bus some dumb-ass, vomiting profanities into his cellular device at the top of his lungs for God and everyone to hear, approached the bus stop and joined the rest of us in the wait for the bus. He looked at each of us as if we were mannequins in the storefront of a thrift shop in a bad part of town, and continued his tirade unabated. I’m not sure to this day that I ever heard him inhale between profanities… I’m pretty sure he didn’t in fact… although I believe it is physically impossible to yell at someone for 5 minutes without breathing somewhere in the middle of all that nonsense.

The bus opened its doors and when it was his turn to pay he stopped talking long enough to plunk in his quarters before continuing to his seat and continuing his hissy fit as if none of us even existed. Once the bus started moving, a woman shrieked from the back of the bus that the driver was supposed to have stopped and let her out. I didn’t hear her and he clearly hadn’t heard her either, but you can better bet that our on-board dumb-ass surely had… he was out of his seat and up in the bus drivers face in a New York second, screaming at him about being a fat bastard that had no business driving a bus if he couldn’t here his passengers asking to be let off.

Now… I’m sure that most moderately normal humanoids experience the same things that I did in that moment – I was stunned. My brain was trying to catch up with all of the things that were happening. I thought about what a dumb-ass he was when I first saw him in the parking lot and I thought about what he was yelling into the phone about throughout all of the five minutes I had spent next to him at the bus stop. I thought about the poor driver who I was quite familiar with (given that I am somewhat of a regular on the # 10 line) and I thought about how much I rather enjoyed hearing him bellow “ALL ABOARD!” with a big wide grin every time he opened the door for passengers to get on. And about the time all of this congealed in my head I looked down at my cane and realized that it would be little more than a flick of the wrist to hit him in the junk from behind and drop his face at the feet of the driver (dumb-ass in question having had to step over my cane in order to get to the front of the bus to begin with) who was now standing up nose-to-nose with this dumb-ass and telling him to get the hell off his bus.

After several rounds of “why don’t you see if you can roll your fat ass off this bus so we can continue this conversation outside” the driver convinced him that it would be far wiser for him to continue his day on foot than to face what waited for him outside that bus, the dumb-ass disembark with not so much as a whimper. Something about the driver’s assurance that their conversation was being recorded through the microphone hidden on the bus through which dispatch was listening and waiting to make the 911 call apparently got his attention and made him think better of the idea of trying to box with a man at least twice his size in such a small confined space.

He will never know how wise his decision was, of course, because he had no way of knowing just how close he was to being caned unconscious had he not chosen to take the drivers advice.

[Images via Borden’s Blog & Wikipedia]

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