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Honolulu Lite

by Charles Memminger

Monday, October 11, 1999


Not nice to mess with
TheBus riders

AS author and renowned druggie Ken Kesey used to tell his Merry Pranksters, you're either on the bus or off the bus.

The bus was a garish hippie-mobile and to be "on the bus" meant that you shared Kesey's acid-tinged outlook on life. Life was a completely different experience for those on the bus vs. the rest of the straight world who just didn't get it.

Honolulu is kind of like that. You are either on TheBus or off TheBus. Bus People are a different breed from the rest of us. For the most part, they view life through large glass panels, relaxed, watching the world roll by. They are content to hand their life over to someone else for a few hours a day and sit back and enjoy the ride.

The rest of us hop into our cars and zoom to work or play. Our goal is to get wherever we are going as quickly as we can. Not only are we not into buses, we don't even want to be in the general vicinity of the lumbering yellow whales. To us, TheBus is just something that gets in TheWay.

But I have investigated the Bus People. I have actually boarded the bus and mixed with them. I studied them at close range, even though they knew immediately I was not one of them. I looked around too much. Made eye contact. fidgeted as if I had someplace to be and I wasn't getting there fast enough.

I attempted to engage in a bus-board activity called "Spot the Loony," a pastime explained to me by one of the few Bus People I know. There are a few loonies on the bus, but for the most part Bus People are exceedingly normal. They have a shared culture. You can do certain things on a bus that would seem odd if you did anywhere else. Like napping.

If you were to simply nod off at your desk everyone would think that you're nutty. But napping on a bus is perfectly acceptable behavior. You can spend an hour within an inch of a complete stranger on the bus and never talk to them. To be so close to someone anywhere but on the bus and not at least say "how yadoin' " would be anti-social. But Bus People are wrapped in an invisible personal space cloak which is respected by other Bus People.

In other words, Bus People are pretty laid back. So it was surprising that so many of them became agitated this week when bus drivers began a slow-driving campaign to protest perceived police harassment. More than 500 Bus People called to complain about the slowdown and late buses.

One of the things drivers did that slowed things down was to wait for passengers to sit down before leaving a stop. This deprived a large segment of our elderly population their daily exercise. See, Bus People are a nimble lot. They are used to the bus starting before they get to their seats. They lurch down the aisle, going from hand hold to hand hold. It's sort of like Tae Bo. I call it Bus Bo. I've seen a lady who must've been 80 years old take off like a sprinter when the bus suddenly jumped forward. She flew for about five feet before grabbing one of the metal poles and swinging herself into a seat like Mary Lou Retton. Aren't too many 80 year old non busriders who could pull off a move like that.

Knowing it takes a lot to provoke Bus People, Mayor Jeremy Harris quickly stepped in and cleared up the misunderstanding between the unionized bus drivers and the police. Now, peace has returned to the world of the Bus People. It's a world I don't quite understand, but I'm glad it's there.



Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.



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