this'll be interesting.

I've taken the first step toward making myself look appealing to UW nursing school admissions. Last night at 11 I enrolled in North Seattle Community College. I'm going to take a night anatomy and physiology class. I think I might be out of my goddam skull!! However weird it might sound, I'm excited to go back to school even though I've only be out for just under a year. So, that's that update.

Here is a bit about something I experience on a daily basis; thoughts of an odd microcosm."Bus Culture" is what I've dubbed it in my own mind. Riding the bus can be tear-jerkingly boring if the "metabusrider" comes out in you. This is a big fat duh, but the average bear should not think about riding the bus while riding the bus our she will jump out the window, especially if the bus is inching along in delightfully sluggish traffic. I, on the other hand, don't mind. The other day I actually got to watch a guy finish reading Moby Dick. Now, it could have been his 2oth time reading it, but I will never know because I don't want to breech one of the contracts of "bus culture". This contract is: don't talk to the perfectly intelligent and capable communicators around you, our you will be punished. Although none of us really know the punishment, we all have a pretty good idea, which is enough to detour our chatty urges. I do wish that I had commented to the Moby Dick guy when he closed the cover to that giant classic, however part of me is just fine with my swallowed words. All in the matter of moments I thought to myself, "wow that's really cool, he read moby dick, i wonder how it was, i should ask him...wait, no, that might build some kind of fellow-rider report-a responsibility that I'm not sure I want-a commitment to obligated forced chatter every morning."

I know everyone thinks this way, but not everyone is wiling to admit it. We all like to think that we are that friendly exception. Wrong. I thoroughly enjoy listening to my NPR podcasts and music in the morning on my ride to work. I would not want to jeopardize this privilege that I have created-making fellow riders believe that I am anti-social and don't enjoy conversing-which is entirely untrue. It's a delicate dance really.

Now, the comedy portion. I LOVE watching people sleep on the bus. All are different in their style and seeming technique. One must be careful however. You never want to be caught by the sleeper or the sleep watchers around you. The various styles are as follows. The Arm Swinger. This is a person whose loses the ability to keep his arm or arms on his lap. It's a pretty funny one. The arm tension slowly slacks and eventually the arm falls with a grand swing. It may or may not hit something on the way down. I can tell how much sleep the person got the night before based on how many times his arm is quickly jerked back to his lap before starting the process over. After probably a dozen times of pulling his arm back to his lap he finally gives way to the relaxation of bus napping. Unfortunately for this poor sleeper, the arm isn't usually the only thing that ends up dangling. Just last night I thought I was going to have to catch a man as half his body was dangling over the side of the bench. Thank goodness for his wife; the active-ish dreamer. She is one who makes hand-motions as she sleeps. Common among vivid bus dreamers.

My favorite kind of bus napper is the one who tries with such effort to not be one of the dangling sleepers. She is the one who can sleep with her neck tense and head level. However graceful she sleeps though, she cannot prevent the inevitable belonging drop. I watch the bag under her hand slowly lose traction on the seat. And with smooth slide it hits the ground. Bam! It's actually not very loud, but I know the sleeper (who instantly wakes) thinks it may have sounded like a boulder thrown from a cliff. They look around and make sure that no one saw--although, we non-sleepers all know that every one of us watched the same event happen. We quickly look away as to not embarrass them. This usually only happens to a person once a ride. It's especially annoying for the sleeper when he drops his book and loses his place. It's interesting to watch how long it takes for him to find his place again.

Ok, that's about enough Bus Culture banter. I know it's hard to believe, but this is a tiny sliver of what unspoken things go on, on the bus...