Next Stop, Belligerence Ave.

It was a still and steamy June afternoon. A woman stomped onto my bus home, somewhere around 20th Street S. Many of the bus windows were open to admit cooling breezes and diesel fumes. She threw herself down in a seat and immediately yelled, "Bus Driver, turn on the air! It's hot in here!" He responded, "I can't turn on the air till all the windows are closed." She threw up her hands and yelled again, "Turn on the air! It's too damn hot!" "Ma'am," he repeated, "I can't turn on the AC until the windows are closed."

His argument finding purchase, she turned to the bus at large and screeched at us all, "Close your windows so Bus Driver can turn on the air!" Waving her hand in front of her face theatrically, she stage-muttered, "It's so hot on this bus," then turned the amp back to 11 to shriek, "Turn on the damn AC, Bus Driver! Turn it on now! It ain't gonna be cold right away! It gotta warm up!"

"Ma'am," he said, steering us through the traffic at about 23rd Street S, "I can't turn on the air until the windows are all closed. I'm going to ask you to be quiet." She reached her breaking point. "Fuuuuck! It's so fucking hot in this bus! Turn on the damn AC! There's kids and babies on this bus! People are dying!"

"I'm sorry - did you say someone's died?" asked Bus Driver. "I don't think anyone's died." Now she was four blocks from where she'd boarded, and she was pissed. "Ain't nobody really died. It's a figure of speech. Goddamn, learn to speak my language. Speak my language! Goddamn."

In English tinged less by a West African accent than his interlocutor's English was thickened with Minnesoooooda-isms, Bus Driver cautioned the Overheated Mama to pipe down. Instead, now five loud blocks from where she got on the bus, she yanked the pull chain and stormed off the bus, shouting in his ear as she passed, "You better believe I'm calling your supervisor! Too hot!"

I wish my iPod came with a setting for "Drown Out the Idiots."