As every public transit commuter will tell you, taking the bus is frustrating (think 3 hour delays due to -40 cold snaps), but it can be a hoot too.

For starters you have the bus drivers – no two drivers are alike.  There’s one that I often get on the way home, who always sets the sign on the bus to say “Go Flames Go.”  And I think he must have been a tour bus operator at some point because he makes announcements the whole way.  He calls out every bus stop, just like the recorded voice on the C-train and, after each and every bus stop he yells “All hands to a rail” before pulling away from the curb.  It really makes for a pleasant ride.

At the other end of the spectrum, is the driver I had this morning.  She was one of those bus drivers (yes, I’ve encountered several) who seem completely unfamiliar with the concept of the back door.  Here’s how it goes: someone dings the bell, so she pulls over and opens the front door.  Typically there’s no one standing at the front door, but she opens it anyway.  After a couple of seconds, the passenger(s) trying to exit (via the back door) call out to her “back door, please.”  Only now does she flick the switch to activate the back door so people can get out.  They alight, she carries on, someone else dings the bell, and this cycle repeats itself ad infinitum.  What gives?  There is a sign in each and every bus that I’ve ever ridden (in any city) that says “Please exit at the rear.”  So why does she seem so oblivious to the concept of people exiting at the rear?  Is she really paying so little attention that she doesn’t realize people do in fact wish to exit at the rear?  Should she be allowed to operate a large vehicle if her head is that far up her own rear?

Bus drivers aside, there are many other ways one can amuse oneself on the bus.  Here are a couple of the games I like to play on my way to and from work:

1.     Source the smell. If there are more than 20 people on the bus, there’s guaranteed to be a farter.  If it’s Monday morning, you might even get one in a thinner crowd.  Farts have an infinite range of attributes, much like the people who produce them – some are light and pass quickly, others are rich and quite sticky – and it’s scads of fun to try to match the fart to the producer.  I mean, you can’t escape it, so you might as well roll with it, right?

2.     How pretty am I? As modest as most of us try to appear, I think people look in the mirror and know where they fit on the 1-10 scale of hotness.  But your mirror doesn’t give you the whole picture.  A 5 in a city full of 2s is, for all intensive purposes, far better off than a 9 overshadowed by 10s.  So the real question is: what percentile am I in?  So when I’m on the bus, or anywhere in public really, I like to take a mental survey as people walk past me – are they prettier or uglier than me?  But be warned – bus samples may not be indicative of the general populace, so the experiment should be repeated in other venues if you don’t want to walk around with an inflated ego.

3.     Manners education. There are so many ways people display bad manners on the bus, that I won’t even attempt to list them.  Most are irremediable, but some can be dealt with in a way that is quite satisfying – at least for me.  Take the seat hog for example.  This person doesn’t occupy the entire 2-person bench, but they do take up two thirds of it, making it an unattractive seat choice for passengers getting on.  I like to make a point of sitting on that third of a bench.  I also like to make a point to cozy up to the seat hog.  Yup, this situation calls for full shoulder to knee contact – a level of intimacy well outside the acceptable range for strangers.  I then rest my hand on the outside edge of my own knee, precariously enough that they expect me to palm their thigh at any moment.  Opportunities to display this sort of passive-aggressive behavior are few and far between, so I seize them when I can!

All of this begs a question: what weird, wonderful or crazy activities help you pass your bus time?