Buses and Boobs

The following is a list of things to do while riding as a passenger on a bus (or other public transport). I realize most sane humans already follow these guidelines, but I feel a friendly reminder can always be helpful in case, just maybe, you forgot.

1. If you will be traveling in a bus, please make sure your personal hygiene is up to par.

(This obviously also applies to everyday life, please take note.)

2. It is fine to listen to music on the bus, but please limit this listening to ear buds and not a speaker surround sound.

I understand your love for Justin Beiber* but I would rather shove a pencil in my eye than listen to his music for my hour commute.

* Justin Beiber can be replaced with any other annoying generic singer or group like Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Nickleback or Creed.

3. Talking on the phone is allowed because, obviously, you have time to kill, but please note the difference between talking and yelling.

I get it, you are upset because your boyfriend forgot to send you flowers for some non-descript holiday, and you want to vent to a friend, family member, pet, etc., but leave that conversation for the two of you and let me fill my own thoughts with delusions of grandeur.

4. If you are not handicapped, crippled, or sick, don’t sit in handicap seats.

This rule is similar to the handicap parking principle except not worthy of a fine. Listen, we all get tired, we all have days where walking three more feet seems like eternity, but when you look in the eyes of a poor old woman who can barely stand and just wants to knit her new grandchild a pair of mittens how can you say no?! Personally, this story breaks my heart for all the old ladies out there with an affinity for knitting.

5. Don’t take off your shoes.

This is not your living room. This is a bus. Don’t confuse the two in your need to make yourself comfortable. Also, the foot odor that you are letting escape through your shoes is filling the recycled air and the nostrils of all 30+ passengers. Need I say this is disgusting? Well let me be clear: this is disgusting! Keep your shoes on! I don’t care about your hard day nor do I want to smell it.

6. If you need to breastfeed your child in the seat next to me, please don’t use my boob as a baby head rest.

First, breastfeeding your baby on a public bus is weird for the most part and the bus isn’t even the place to have such a private moment between you and your child. With the 30+ onlookers you are just allowing strangers to oogle at your nipple as you wait for the baby to latch on. I forget when the bus became a place for one’s inner exhibitionist to come out and play.

Now, I don’t have a child, and after watching this, probably won’t be having one anytime soon, so I am very naïve to the breastfeeding process. With that said, if you know you will be commuting with child, don’t you prepare yourself with bottles of breast milk or formula? Isn’t this the logical resolution? I’m just saying!

Anyway, I digress, if you are to breastfeed your child in a bus don’t sit next to me and then use the leverage of my chest to pose as a pillow of sorts for the baby to rest on while you breastfeed. When I came on the bus after my 8 hour work day I did not sign up for this job! When I sit in the bus I would like to be encapsulated by a bubble, a “bubble effect” if you will, don’t fuck with that! You are breaking my bubble with your annoying baby and with no care for my feelings.

I get it, babies, in general, have to eat and the baby probably thinks two sets of jugs are better than one, but leave me and my knockers out of it. Just because I am female does not make me any more inclined to be alright with this; in fact quite the opposite. I am horrified that I am sitting next to this. But I am an adult, so I show restraint. I would love to start yelling and embarrass you enough in the hope you would find a new seat mate who would be more inclined to deal with your shit. Instead, I choose to pretend this is not happening until I feel the pressure of your baby's head squeezing my boob and then I am back to the reality of my cramped bus seat and met with the smirks of other passengers who feel bad for my situation but find this delightfully entertaining.

So to people who find this process the norm, what the fuck is wrong with you? Find another place to feed your child that doesn’t involve nipple-sucking, me, or my boob. Let it be a singular act that you and your child can enjoy together. Let me offer a few places to do this:

- A BATHROOM, maybe even one with a stall made for this activity,

- an office with a closed door,

- did I say bathroom?!

There are many places. Find one and leave me and my bubble the fuck alone.

I hope these bus rules have helped you in determining your behavior the next time you take on public transportation. I know this will definitely be beneficial to me and my hour commute home.

Milk Chocolate And Citrus

I hate the mix of milk chocolate and citrus. It is a woeful combination. My first taste of this elixir was when I was aged 7.

My parents were getting ready for work and I was preparing my breakfast. I normally had Rice Krispies with a couple of tablespoons of sugar. So I got a bowl out, poured some Krispies in, got the milk--poured that shit in. Then I was lost in my own thoughts--about Thundercats.

A little background: My parents are both workaholic doctors--without decorum. So one day when I was with my babysitter, I happened to catch an episode of Ricki Lake. So, I grew curious. What is sex and why is that dirty man claiming that he and his rotund girlfriend are going to have sex in the bathroom? So I asked my parents. They were stumped by the latter inquiry, but they gave me a more than thorough description of the former question. Remember, I'm 7.

I began applying this newfound knowledge to everything I knew. Enter Thundercats. So I was wondering whether Lion-O had sex with Cheetara. I assumed for the sake of further inquiry that they were. But when they did, did they prefer cat position?

While I was wondering this, I got the orange juice and poured it into my cereal bowl. So milk, cereal, and oj.

I figured I had to eat this shit. My dad had told me about all the poor Ethiopian children. I was still at the age where I cared about the plight of Ethiopian children. So I started eating it. It was the worst--milk and citrus don't go together. It was the cottage cheese, curdled, sour nonsense.

So some of you might be thinking--that's milk and oj. That ain't milk chocolate and oj. Well morons, I don't think much would change if I dumped cocoa powder all over that shit. It would still be shit. And yeah, I'm right. I had one of those Toblerone chocolate oranges. It was terrible. Terrible. In fact, my ex-girlfriend handed that to me on the train and I puked all over the place. That was the same day I went down on her while she was having her period. The chocorange was the worst thing I had that day.

So, in summation, if you like milk chocolate and citrus, I suspect that you are a child of incest.

Kids Lie...Except When They're Telling the Truth

When I was a little girl, every time my birthday rolled around, there were only three things that I ever wanted: a dog, one of those silver, jingly medical bracelets*, and a Ring Pop. My expectations were tempered in early childhood, so mostly, I just wanted the Ring Pop—you know, that huge, pre-diabetic sugar rock stuck to two prongs of plastic intended to fit on one’s finger (there had to be an opening in the band, since the kids who received Ring Pops presumably had chubby phalanges, i.e., “hot dog fingers”).

In old home videos, whenever I opened a birthday present—no matter the size of the package—I would squeal in delight and declare that it was a Ring Pop. Come on, folks, I knew; I was no dummy. In elementary school, kids used to tell me to speak English because they couldn’t understand my advanced vocabulary. I knew the comparatively oversized boxes did not contain a Ring Pop. It was a manipulative, desperate act to obtain my candy bling. It didn’t work, though, as I never did receive one.

Fortunately, I was more successful when it came to the dog. After ten years of enthusiastically telling my mother that I would eat the dog crap if I did not remember to pick up after it, she finally relented. It was a total lie—the likelihood of my consumption of canine excrement was akin to the chance a man is telling the truth when he denies having ever masturbated (yes, I have met men like this; for your own sake, please, do not date them). In actuality, she bought me the puppy as a last ditch effort to lift me out of an emo, teenage funk partially precipitated by the breakup of my first not-worth-it relationship. But, I knew the influence of my words couldn’t be underestimated, as she still reminds me in nag sessions of my promise when I reluctantly pick up after him.

So, with all this seemingly-innocent deceitfulness going on, how do you know when children are being honest? If they state they broke the ant farm in the kitchen, contradict daddy when you ask, “Do I look fat in this dress?,” or inquire if you’re a boy or a girl, you can rest assured that your little darling is telling the truth.

*I found out years later my mother was adamantly against medical bracelets because “pedophiles could use the personal information and address” and, well, I was adorable.