Sitting Pretty in the Shuttle

5 pm and once again I find myself perched on the edge of my seat, my right leg braced between the back of the passenger’s seat and the sliding door to keep me in place. My foot and  leg feel like they are going to be permanently deformed from the cramps  caused by having to spend the whole trip  pushing  against the floor with the balls of my feet. My right ass cheek is jealous of the left one because it doesn’t have any support; it’s standing room only for the right half of my body. But the left half is complaining too, because I can’t move a muscle or I will lose what little space I have secured for myself.  I can feel that despite the heroic efforts of the right half of my body, it is lower than the left half. In the window I notice that my reflection looks like a person with hemiparalysis, the affected side drooping while the other permanently tenses up.

And why am I in this uncomfortable position? Well, great question! It’s because I’m sitting next to Vicki, the 60ish woman who sits in the exact geometric center of the seat -  I guess so that her imaginary friend doesn’t feel cramped between her and the window. Really, it’s my best guess, because even though her ass is hella lumpy, she’s not that fat, and she has never put anything there (at least not that I have seen in 11 months of riding).  At least her imaginary friend is quiet, unlike her. She has an opinion about every fucking thing, and never hesitates to express it. She makes small-talk with the  driver, with other passengers, with the person at the other end of the cell phone, blah blah blah. If, perchance, the conversation dwindles – usually because the other individual wasn’t all that interested in it in the first place – she fidgets, looks around at what every other rider is doing (if they are behind her she does a 180 in her seat and cranes her neck like a hen), clears her through, and…starts a new, equally dull and meaningless , conversation. If others happen to be having a conversation without her, that is intolerable, even if it involves a rider talking on his or her cell.  She interjects her thoughts in a highly authoritative tone, similar to the tone a judge might use when somberly addressing the defendant in a criminal trial, as if each word was a solemn pronouncement of wisdom that she had carefully deliberated before choosing to bestow it upon us. Like the canned laughter in a sitcom, these weighty pronouncements are irrelevant and annoying, yet form a definitive part of the experience.