On Paper

A curious thing happened on the bus this evening. The woman next to me was reading my blog on her phone. And then my head exploded.

Let me back up.

I am in love with my bus driver. He is large and mean, does not appear to have a neck and is mean. Yes, that mean. He yells at people who take too long to swipe their commuter card, doesn't allow talking, honks at cars and gets me home super fast. Normally I sit in the first seat behind him, and lately I've noticed that he unfolds a commuter schedule and tapes it upside down onto the plexiglass behind his head. I imagine this is so I cannot count the folds where the base of his head meets his shoulders. He was gone for a few days this week and I worried that he had been fired. I've heard rumblings from other commuters that they were going to complain about him to the transit authority, but today he was back and I was happy. I don't know why I love him, really. It's not like I have a thing for mean people or anything against necks for that matter. It's just--he's so unapologetic, so very large and so him. Anyway, at one point tonight he laid on the horn at a well-meaning Prius making me snap my head up startled and there it was. The woman next to me reading this blog.

Hello.

For a minute I thought I was looking at my own phone. And then maybe I was looking at myself, out of body, but no, there she was and there I was, two strange women prattling down Post Street in the seated position and I wondered if maybe I should say something. Point to the picture: that's me? But then I remembered that there is still a strep face scab under my nose and how someone at work had just discreetly told me I had something there? With a little finger motion to my nose because she thought it was a booger so I didn't say anything because who wants their blogger to have what looks like a booger but is really a scab. Not me, that's who.

Years ago a good friend told me that a girl that we both used to work with read my blog and loved it. She is so funny! this girl said. I wish I had known. I would have liked to have been friends with her. Which is nice except I had worked with her for maybe 5 years and she did know me but apparently did not want to be friends with the not-blog me.

You're hard to get to know, my good friend said, a fact I know to be true.
So I sat next to the lady while she read my blog without even knowing that I was sitting right next to her and I thought about how celebrities always have disproportionately large heads in real life and about how I have a scab under my nose that won't heal and love a fat bus driver despite the fact or because he's mean.