Column:

On the city bus, the party is in the back

By Dan Friesen

Published Sept. 12, 2006

Last year, I lived in an amazing house. It bordered on the palatial: crystal chandeliers, pea-green shag carpeting, AstroTurf entry room. During the summer I moved back into the Gatehouse Apartments. Despite the modest size, I really enjoy this lifestyle. I feel connected to the common man, specifically, the common steely-eyed foreigner.

Apartment complexes are fantastic - hundreds of little boxes where hundreds of people live anonymously. No one knows my name, no one cares what I do, yet the complex is still a little community of which I am a part, if only by default.

One of the perks of living here is that they provide a shuttle to campus every hour. Now, when I say that this is a perk, I mean that it is convenient, not that it is an enjoyable experience.

I have a strong suspicion that, in a desperate attempt to save a few nickels, the management purchased a junked WWI troop transport bus, painted it blue, and called it a shuttle. I can't complain; it hasn't broken down yet this semester.

The conversations available for eavesdropping on the bus are abysmal, almost as bad as "Mind of Mencia." Last week, I overheard a fellow passenger explain to his friend the comedy of the host of said show:

"Dude, he's so funny. He's totally racist."

"Against who?" (not "whom," mind you).

"Dude, against everyone: the blacks, whites, Mexicans and Jews. This one episode..."

"Tell me later," his friend said, clearly bored or questioning whether it was judicious to talk about how racism is funny in a closed space that could easily be mistaken for Johnny Quest's holding cell.

One thing I find interesting is people's seating choices. There is almost always someone who sits in the front seat and tries to chat up the driver, who is consistently chagrined by the attention. There are usually a couple of cool, gym clothes-wearing, sandal-sporting, sunglass-having douche bags sitting across the aisle from each other talking a little too loud than if it was meant to be private.

Then there's me. I always sit in the back. Not because I am anti-social, rather, it's because in junior high I was not cool enough to sit in the back. That was where the social elite sat, and I needn't tell you that those were not my people. Try as I might, I could never get past the sixth row from the back before someone looked at me with a level of disdain usually reserved for pedophiles and white slavers. Now that I ride a bus with a 45-year-old Pakistani man, three Asian chicks who can't speak English and the aforementioned douche bags, I am the social elite. And goddamnit, I am making up for lost time.

I never could understand why some people don't want to sit at the back of the bus. Whenever I think of those people, my mind can't help but wander to memories of watching "Filthy Rich Cattle Drive" on E!, and Noah Blake in particular. Here is this guy who has tons of money and a cushy lifestyle. What does he do? He goes on a TV show and gives it all up to try to show that he is just like us. It just strikes me as pretentious when people with extraordinary privileges insist upon giving them up to make themselves seem more relatable, except when I do it.