Kapiolani Community College
Diamond Journal 2003Fall

The Bus Enlivened
Dominique Martinez

The Shark Bus
It’s four times the length of a car and reminds me of a big shark swimming through as sea of cars. The bike rack above its front bumper reminds me of braces. A giant shark with braces. Once I saw one devour a car. The seafoam green Honda Civic made the sound of a soda can being mercilessly crushed as the bus-shark compressed the little seafoam Civic into a thin sardine cracker, swallowing it whole and shitting it out behind it as it drove away.

Venetian Blinds for Eyes
Each bus has a sign on the front to let you know where it’s going, but I have bad eyesight and can never read the sign until the bus gets really close. That forces me to stand up next to the bus stop sign to make sure it’ll slow down just in case it’s the one I need to catch. It’s either that or sit on the bench and, as quickly and discretely as possible, pull the corner of my eye with one finger to force my eyelids into a paper thin eyehole through which my pupil can more easily focus, allowing me to see better, and then let it go fast before anyone notices what I did or how funny I looked while I did it.

#7 Kalihi Uka
The inside of the bus is actually kind of neat. It has also changed throughout the years. Gone are the old one seaters. Now all the seats facing forward are in pairs, and we have to sit next to a stranger. When I was young, the busses into Kalihi Valley not only had single seats instead of paired seats, but they also had a window in the back that you could could look out of and see the cars stuck behind the bus. With only one lane in and out of Kalihi Valley, cars would back up quickly behind the bus.

I never fully realized that the look on the faces of the commuters behind us, when their eyes popped out of their heads whole their lips moved really fast and their hands waved wildly, meant that I should probably turn around and stop sticking tongue, making faces, and mimicking their weird traffic dance. What I saw: crazy adults doing the traffic dance (Wow, they’ve been behind us for a while). What they saw: damn brats in the window (I wish they’d just turn around and hurry up; that stupid bus is holding up traffic).

Sue Job Slide
Once the door opens and you climb those three stairs to deposit your fare and enter the bus, you can find a seat. The floor on the bus has parallel grooves that are etched from the front to the back of the bus, creating miniature upraised rails on which you are prone to, when wet, slide from the the front of the bus all the way to the back of the bus. I could never understand why they couldn’t just make the floor textured with some of those flower shaped bathroom tub stickers that prevent you from slipping. Maybe flowers wouldn’t be great for the bus, but what about cute minibusses? Anything would be better than the slide rails; someone could break their neck.

The Wipe Test
When you find an open seat, you shouldn’t just sit on it. You’ve got to give it the wipe test. Brush your hand quickly over the potential butt-resting place to get rid of debris from the previous rider and to make sure that they didn’t leave any wet surprises behind. Negative effects of the wipe test: if they left anything behind, you’ll get it on your hands!

An Ocular Oasis
Located above the windows on the bus are panels that hold all kinds of different advertisements. City events, Sunset on the Beach, the Punahou Carnival, Blood Drives, and even Jake Shimabukuro grace the glossy bus posters. The posters offer the advertisers an extra way to sell their product or service, but to us riders they offer much more than just a menu for services. To us, the posters are almost like a retreat for our eyes. Thanks to these posters, riders don’t have to gaze around the bus and observe any of the many weirdos who may be located near us. The posters give us a pleasant getaway, a time out, an optical safe haven, an opportunity to stare at something that won’t stare back at us, give us funny looks, or try to hit on us.

Transfer
A “transfer” is a rectangular piece of paper with the date and a list of all the hours in a day. It is ripped at the hour about four hours after you board the bus. For instance, if you catch the bus at 12 in the afternoon, the transfer will will ripped at 4 p.m., which is when your transfer will expire. This so-called expiration can be easily cheated by crumpling your transfer, hiding the rip and showing the driver the crunched up transfer so s/he can see the date and not much else. They never check it or take it because you can use your transfer for more than one trip on the bus “as long as it’s within the grace period.” You can also use it to go in any direction and on different busses. This is great for those days when I forget my bus pass.

Change (the Loose Kind)
Catching the bus is pretty cheap compared to driving a car (but it still sucks). If you drove a car, you would have to pay for the car payments, insurance, maintenance, and any parking/traffic tickets you might acquire. But the bus is different. It’s a one shot deal. You pay per ride (or you can purchase a monthly pass if you catch the bus often). Adults (including college students) pay $1.50 and pre-college students pay $0.75. When I was younger, students only had to pay $0.25! Those titas in elementary used to say, “Eh, sista, I like borrow quartah!” I wonder if they’ve changed their fee too.