So why does this rate a blog entry? Because, with ONE exception about eight years ago when I came into the city to hang out with Joel and somehow he convinced me it would be easier to get wherever we were going on the bus, I have NEVER ridden the bus. In my memory there was an old lady with live chickens in her lap but I think my memory may have added that later for narrative amusement. I do remember it was gross and crowded and slow and I didn’t like it AT ALL. Because *I* am a SUBURBS girl.
Until we moved to the city last fall I had spent my entire life living in a variety of suburbs. The ugly suburbs of Northeast Bakersfield, the dorms surrounded by houses of UOP, the rolling hills of Marin county (I don’t actually think it gets more suburban than that), the Victorian houses of Old Petaluma (I could walk to the store and to the downtown shops but my little cottage was still totally in the ‘burbs part of it) and last but not least the delusions-of-grandeur-having suburbs of Folsom (once a nice little town with a famous prison and many oak trees -- now an ever-expanding parking lot covered with foreclosed houses that didn’t exist two years ago).
Yep – 36 years of suburb living. Not suburban living (which would mean more like city living which is weird but so is MUCH of the English language – growing up in the suburbs probably means that you are NOT suburban and now I’ve gotten to the point where neither even sounds like a real word in my head anymore so I am going to just leave it) but actual living in the suburbs. I’m not proud of it. But I grew up in Bakersfield where if you wanted to see something OTHER than tract houses and fog (winter) or tract houses and heat haze (summer) you had to walk at least ¾ of a mile. Which I did. As soon as I got old enough I walked to school and as a teenager I was willing to walk, in 100 degree weather, in full “summer” goth regalia (black boots, shorts, t-shirt and SPF 15 which is, I THINK, as high as it went back them) to get to my friend’s house or to Longs to buy an ice cream cone. But if you wanted to go any further than that you had to drive or be driven. So my parents drove me all over the place when I was little.
And pretty much from the MOMENT I got my drivers license I never walked anywhere again. Thus starting the pattern in my life of always being the friend who had a car. In high school, in college, I was the girl who had a car and would drive. Especially in high school when the car I was driving was a brand new Chrysler Laser Turbo which, after I wrecked it the first weekend I got it and then they put it all back together again, I drove everywhere. Sometimes with as many as six people crammed into it. That law they have now about how during the first six months teenagers have their licenses they can’t drive any OTHER teenagers without a grown up in the car? That’s because of me. Sorry teenagers. But I digress. The point is I liked driving, never minded having to drive, never even minded being the designated driver once that became an issue because being the driver means you are IN CONTROL. I love, both metaphorically and literally, being in the driver’s seat.
I like it to the point that, if possible, I will drive somewhere instead of fly. Or take the train. I hate AMTRACK. My parents thought it might be a good way of my getting back and forth from University to Bakersfield for holidays and so I tried it. Once. And I hated it. The train stopped in every single town and never got over 50mph. A drive I could have done in three hours and forty minutes took SIX hours on the train. SIX! Also, if you are driving you get to decide that, if you want to stop for Taco Bell two hours into the drive and then stop again at hour four to use a restroom and buy a Hershey bar, you can. I like that control. I like controlling the temperature of the car, what kind of music is playing and how loud it is. I pretty much like everything about driving. I like driving so much that for fifteen years I bought stick-shifts on purpose because it felt MORE like driving. I do NOT, however, like feeling like I need knee replacement surgery after being stuck in traffic for an hour and I REALLY do not like rolling BACKWARDS into the car behind me (which is always a Mercedes, don’t ask me why) after I get stuck on a steep hill. So once I knew we were moving to the city I knew it was time to trade my stick shift in for an automatic. Since that automatic engine was packaged in a brand new green Mini Cooper S, I didn’t mind at all. Now I giggle manically while accelerating up the mountain to my house.
So yeah, I love driving. I’m a control freak who is, incidentally, terrified of flying (but they make pills for that so I CAN fly when I need to go someplace I can’t really drive to, like New Jersey). But that isn’t the ONLY reason I dread the bus and have managed to avoid it for nearly ten months. I’m ALSO a bit of a germaphobe. Just running errands in the city I always try to remember to WASH MY HANDS before I eat something. I don’t fear CRIME, just bacteria. I don’t even like using shopping carts at the Safeway because I have seen the OTHER people who use them and while they are a HIGHLY diverse and entertaining bunch (I can’t imagine I will ever get tired of the street theater that goes on 24/7 here) I can tell some of them aren’t quite as obsessed with cleanliness as I am. Plus I saw that episode of Oprah where she had people go around and swab things in public for germs and all KINDS of nasty stuff was on everything.
So riding the bus is a bit like being trapped IN the germy shopping cart. A big germy shopping cart filled with germy people coughing TB on you that goes really slowly, stops all the time to let more germy people on and then doesn’t even go exactly where I want to go. I do not want to take the bus. Really.
But, I do want to get a job soon and I have no delusions whatsoever that whatever vet hires me is going to have employee parking. There IS no free parking. John has to pay some ridiculous price every month to park on the roof of his own building. If the vet I end up working for DOES actually have, say, four parking spaces in a teeny lot they will be for clients. And maybe the vet himself. But certainly not for smock-wearing me. And most likely what will surround the building I work in will be many other buildings and metered parking. And at $1.50 an HOUR I couldn’t really afford to keep the meter fed even if they WERE willing to let me stop working every HOUR to run outside and feed quarters into the meter.
So tomorrow I ride the bus. I’m taking John so that while I may have to battle germs I at least know I won’t get lost or get distracted by reading my book and look up and realize I’ve taken the bus to Bayview. Something I would so do. So we’re going to practice. Wish me luck! Hopefully we’ll get safely home and back without getting lost OR having someone cough bird flu onto me.
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