Friday Evening, 9:00 p.m.
Port Authority Bus Terminal

I am sitting on a Greyhound Bus. We were supposed to leave an hour ago. The girl behind me starts to lose her composure.

“Can’t we just, like, leave?” She says to no one in particular. “We’re like an hour late.”

She has one of those grating voices made to command a clique of mean girls.

Thirty seconds later, “Oh my GOD. This is so ridiculous.”

One minute later, “Why haven’t we left yet?!” She releases a sigh-whine that lets everyone know how she must be the most inconvenienced by this situation.

Finally, we depart. I think she’ll shut up. But since we’re finally out of the bus terminal, it means that she has cell phone service, which means she can talk to her boyfriend about how upset she is:

“Hi. We just left. I’m going to get there so late. Oh my god, this is so unfair. It’s just so hard. Why does everything have to be so hard?” Starts crying. “This is just so annoying. You don’t know how annoying it is. You don’t have to take the bus. What? What did you say? Uhhh. I can’t hear you! Stop mumbling. No. No. I’m not thinking about other guys. No. What? I can’t hear you. Oh my god. I can’t talk to you right now. I have to go. What? Bye. I said, ‘BYE.’ BYE. What? Fine. BYE.”

And yet, despite all of the goodbyes, the conversation continues on into the night...

Meanwhile, two female passengers are giving the driver directions out of the city. Apparently, he doesn’t usually drive to Boston.

There’s a guy sitting in the front seat who’s training to be a Greyhound bus driver. He used to work for a hedge fund.

That’s what he told the grandmother sitting right in front of me. She’s traveling with her grandson, who can’t be more than five. I’m hearing her recount her days as a truck driver to the little tyke. With her short spiked haircut and her over-sized heart-shaped hoops, she may be the most bad-ass grandmother I’ve ever seen. She keeps encouraging the driver to “kick butt.” He’s flooring it under her guidance.

The backseat drivers are telling him, “not to get cocky.”

I’m currently on my way to Boston, the city of tea-dumping and d-bag sports fans. When I hate on Red Sox fans, I’m not speaking as a wannabe New Yorker or a fair-weather Yankees supporter. Please. I grew up in the greater Boston area and my aversion to Sox fans (not the Sox themselves--just their fans) comes from the bottom of my heart. A better portion of my life has been spent vying for control of the remote. My brother was always the incumbent couch potato, glued to every game. My sister and I would demand change. My brother would tell us we couldn’t watch Dawson’s Creek. My sister and I would shout, “Yes we can!” But we usually lost the battle, mostly because our parents were far too apathetic to take sides. I’m glad that things worked out better for Obama this week.

Yeah, I’m pretty excited about Obama’s victory, not just because I’ve been supporting him since before the primaries, but I’m also thrilled at the prospect of a new First puppy arriving at the White House--one of the first changes he promised in his speech on Tuesday night.


It’s hard to believe the election is finally over. It was a historic race, and though I don’t feel any sympathy for the McCain/Palin ticket, I can’t help but wonder how Bristol Palin is doing these days. Poor Bristol. Now everyone in the world knows she had careless, indulgent, unprotected sex with her hockey boyfriend and for what? So her mom could lose the election. That must be true teen angst. I wonder if she’s having some Are You There, God? It’s Me, Bristol moments. I’d read that book. It would be a great sequel to Margaret’s menstruation musings.

What are she and Levi going to name the baby? Denim. Rifle. Ice. Pog. It’s kind of a fun game to play. I’d love it if they named the baby Pog, like that game I used to play in third grade.


The burden of naming a baby strikes me as a daunting task--it’s so permanent, like deciding to get a tattoo. It’s a seemingly superficial matter, yet you’ll be reminded of the decision for the rest of your life. A name is one of the few features of an offspring that, at least initially, you have control over. Until, of course, your son or daughter finds some new age religion, renames him or herself Tree Bark and never speaks to you again. I’m really enthusiastic about the prospect of raising a family.

This trucker granny and her grandson are pretty inspiring though. He’s sleeping now. She stares off out the window, her heart-shaped earrings silhouetted in the orange highway streetlights. Also dimly lit: the abnormally large chin of the guy sleeping across from me on the bus. I can’t stop glancing over at it. Funny, because MMB also encountered a chinormous man on her bus ride a couple of months ago.

I love the haywire train of thought that public transportation always inspires. My mind generally tends to dwell and obsess but, under the influence of strangers’ appearances and behaviors, it becomes scattered, haphazardly leaping from topic to topic. In New York, I’m constantly surrounded by people, whether I’m walking down the street, buying groceries, or working out at the gym. But within each of these activities lies a sense of individual purpose and direction. While on a bus or a subway car, I relinquish that individual movement, settling into a perfect stillness that allows me to think, reflect, and observe on another level.

“Oh my God!” the girlfriend screeches behind me. “I like, can’t even talk to you anymore. BYE. BYE. BYE.”

Then again, nothing is ever perfect.