As I waited for my transfer bus at the hub downtown, I noticed five teenaged girls. They were typical; giggly, fourteen, but looked twenty-three, and a little loud.
Only three of the five boarded. They sat nearest to the driver oblivious to the posted sign reserving those seats for the elderly and handicapped.
The driver shut the door. Just then, one of the pair with glasses and red dyed hair screamed out that one of the girls who had not boarded had her phone. The girl stood repeating herself in fright. She moved towards the driver and pleaded for her to open the door. One of her friends asked the driver to wait, again explaining the situation. She first yelled for her friend with the phone, who was too far away to hear. She jumped from the bus and ran towards the friend who was now at least a couple hundred feet away.
Then, there were two...
The driver told the girl that she had a schedule and couldn't wait. Enraged the glasses girl was speechless for a second as the doors closed and the driver headed for the exit from the bus hub. In disbelief the girl said "Seriously" a couple times to the driver, as her friend having retrieved the phone stood outside the bus confused. The other girl demanded that the driver open the doors. The driver told her that once the bus was in motion she could not just open the doors. The doors could only be open at an actual bus stop.
Neither of the pair were having this. They pounded on the door, and called the driver a bitch. Glasses girl started to freak out. Her friend made it known that she was having a panic attack. "Why are you being such a bitch? Do you want her to have a panic attack?" Glasses girl was near hysterical, and her friend not far behind. They pounded on the door. Oddly, the girls outside the bus seemed to figure that the driver was headed to the next stop, and appeared to be hurrying there.
Inside the bus, the driver was responding to a query as to whether she was "that kind of bitch to let her have a panic attack?" "Yeah, I'm am going to show you that I am that bitch," the driver said far more passively than I might have at this point. The bus now was in the inside turning lane of Adams Street, signaling for Salina Street. Both girls were still yelling about the impending panic attack while pounding on the door. The second girl seemed to be searching as she pounded. She found it. She found some sort of emergency button that released the "lock" on the door. Swearing, both girls forced the door opened, and quickly jumped from the bus onto the street. They were narrowly missed by another bus in the other lane. My bus full of people, (including myself) was now pissed. A middle-aged woman across the aisle spoke our horror aloud "Damn, now this is a fucking incident, and we can't leave until security and the police come."
"Fuck you!" She was probably a nice lady, and I didn't mean it personally, which is why the words remained in my head. Security et al came, and finally we were on our way. I sat there thinking how nuts this was and how panic stricken glasses girl will be in jail. I hope that her friend didn't walk off with her meds too
