Dear Little Old Lady,

This afternoon when I was very tired and I got onto the bus after the train to go home, you were in the line to get onto said bus in front of me with your friend. Both of you are probably considered to be senior citizens and you both had the paper bus passes to put into the ticket machine to verify that you had, in fact, paid for your transfers.

Your friend's ticket was fine, your's however had expired and you continued to walk towards a seat anyways. The bus driver called you back to tell you that your ticket was no good and that you would have to pay again, he had checked the time stamp on your transfer and it had expired over an hour ago. You just smiled and waved to him, shaking your head before you sat down.

A man in front of you was trying to explain it to you and you spoke to him as if he was an annoying pest. The bus driver told the man to explain to you that you needed to pay, but the man just shook his head and said that you were speaking Korean and that he spoke Chinese and therefore could not successfully communicate with you.

The woman sitting next to this man who had tried to explain that you needed to pay for another transfer went up to the bus driver with some change and offered to pay for your transfer for you and the bus driver thanked the woman, but declined her offer. According to him, and he had been driving that particular bus that starts off at the station at 3:20pm, that you had been coming onto the bus every single day for the last two weeks with an expired transfer.

He said very loudly that you were lucky this time and that the next time he was going to get nasty and call the transit cops on you.

You got off a few stops later and gave the bus driver this huge smile as if he had done some great favour for you and you were on your way with your half a dozen grocery bags.

If you had enough money to buy junk food (white translucent bags showed off your collection of cans of Pringles and plastic tubs of candy) you obviously could afford to pay less than $3 so you wouldn't have to walk the 4 blocks that you took the bus for.

Dear Mummy-Boy,

A while ago, I was on the bus whilst traveling from the campus to the train station, I remember hearing you standing there. You looked quite nice. You had on a neat blazer and dark jeans. You had on clean shoes and a backpack on your shoulder. And I remember overhearing your conversation that you were having on your cell phone.

"Hello Mom? Yeah, it's me. Happy birthday!"
-short pause-
"You remember Ashley, my girlfriend?"
-another short pause-
"Yeah, she got these results back from the doctor at the clinic..."
-very short pause-
"No, she's not pregnant, Mom!"
-short pause-
"She has gonorrhea.."
-very long pause-
"I'm going to get tested this weekend, Mom."
-very short pause-
"I love you, Mom. Happy birthday."

Thank you for providing entertainment to me for those seven minutes in which you were speaking to your mother and wishing her a happy birthday while informing her seemingly casually that you may or may not have a STD.

Things that you have to look forward to if you do have gonorrhea and if you don't get treated is pain while going to the washroom, assorted pus discharge and other infection to your nether regions.

Cheers!

Dear Fellow Transit Patrons,

This morning I had been running late. I wanted to go to my voluntary math lab tutorial so that I could complete the lab with knowledgeable TAs around and with a printer in the vicinity because I know that if I were to print it at home, I'd probably jam my printer - again.

So I was running late. The train was literally crawling for the last two stations it took to get to the one where I get off. I'm not just saying that it was a little slower than normal... See, at the regular train speed, the rails on the sides of the track are a blur and I can't even tell that there are bars there. Today, I could count the bars that made up the rails as well as see that someone had tossed something that resembled paint out of a window once and it coated the bars in some spots. That is how slow it was going.

Which is all fine and dandy because then I got off at the right train station and got onto a bus. I had an excellent spot to sit and then approximately twenty minutes later, that all went to hell. A woman getting off (or on..?) the bus collapsed, hit her head and went unconscious. So obviously the bus driver had to completely stop the bus and was calling for an ambulance. This is all very good, but I was sitting near the back and since it is an extra long bus, I couldn't see what was happening at the front. Until people started filing off of the bus. When I realize that most of the people were off of the bus by now, I stand up and file off as well, single-file just like in kindergarten. I notice people standing around and, since that particular stop was near a hospital, there was already a nurse there (I believe that she was on the bus on her way into work).

This will probably sound completely callous and horrible... But I really wish that I didn't have to get off that bus and then board another one (that barely had any standing room).

But... I'm glad that the bus driver and other fellow transit patrons took the initiative to make sure that the woman was alright... Because occasionally I'm just a little too selfish for my own good. But I did realize that I was definitely no longer having a 'bad day'. I hope the woman was right...

And to my fellow transit patrons, I understand why you all were cursing the woman for collapsing. But I am almost 100% positive that she did not collapse and go unconscious to ruin your day. It wasn't someone out to ruin your morning or make you late for your first lecture of the day. She was a woman who fell and then couldn't get back up again. I hope that if anything like that ever happens to me, there'd be people around willing to actually help me.

And yes, I was late for my drop-in tutorial session, but it was fine as I had the lab completed within 16 minutes anyways.