Zen Mind, Bus Mind

I am not a public transportation novice. Before I had a car in Pittsburgh, I relied on PAT buses regularly. I went to college just outside of New York City and made a complicated and long commute into the city weekly for internships there, not to mention all of the train and subway usage for less resume -building fun. I lived in London for a year and took the bus to Sainsbury's for groceries and the Tube and trains everywhere else- I have minded the gap with the best of them. But what I can no longer do is read a bus schedule.

Just last week I ran to the corner near our house and missed a bus which I was sure would not come again for another 25 minutes. It did indeed show up 12 minutes later- I read the schedule for the A instead of the B, which rattles down Penn Avenue more frequently. It was good news that day, but bad news for my general self esteem.

Growing up, my family pegged me as the book smart one, not the practical one. And though I am a tax- paying, fully capable, productive citizen, I still carry some of that assessment with me. For instance, when I am standing on a corner engulfed in bus fumes, wondering why I can't seem to manage something that most fifth graders can do with ease.

In an attempt to end the suffering, I ask myself, “Does it really matter when I get somewhere, as long as I get there?” As it turns out, yes, sometimes it does. And the burden is that this is entirely my doing. There are times when a bus is late, or it just never arrives, mysteriously disappearing from the rotation. But the situation here is that I just can't get it.

I cannot calculate the time and and distance projections for when a bus should arrive at a certain corner when it is .2 miles away from the corner last listed on the schedule. I cannot remember time intervals between buses on a given route during a particular time of day. And I cannot keep weekday and Sunday bus schedules straight.

When I started riding the bus again, I never consulted schedules. I was so pleased with the novelty of being picked up and transported where I wanted to go by someone else for a change. But now I have expectations.

At a stop in front of the new Children's Hospital, there is a number you can text to find out when the next bus scheduled will arrive, but most stops don't offer that service. My default is to ask the person already standing there, unless of course, it is just me, because everyone else has just been picked up 30 seconds before.

How do I make my peace with this when it frustrates me weekly? I suppose the same way I ignore other lapses of my aging mind, like my shortened short term memory. No amount of schedules in my bag is going to protect me from that.

It seems the way to master Bus Mind is to give in to it, but not to be mastered by it, either. As I work on that, I can work on my bus legs. They cause my body to waiver and totter more than my mind as I navigate buses with two-tiered interiors and abrupt stops.