Last week, I was riding public transit to get around Boston like I usually do. I took the Orange Line to Back Bay to catch the bus to Boston University Medical Center. From there, I’d make the short walk to a meeting scheduled nearby. As I came out on the street from the subway, I wondered which line I needed to get into to catch the Boston Medical Center bus.
It turned out to be obvious. One didn’t need Sherlockian powers of observation to identify which line was for the bus going to the hospital. The queue to my left looked like any random group of ten people you could find in the city. The queue to my right was made up of people with walkers crutches, and bandages. I got in the line on my right and took the bus to the hospital area.
Later in the week, I got on a bus in a different part of town for a another meeting. As I rode along, I realized my fellow riders were college students and carrying all sorts of art supplies: Framed canvases, finished paintings, big portfolios for drawings etc… I hadn’t thought about it before boarding, but obviously this bus went right by the Massachusetts College of Art.
This made me wonder what it said about me. Obviously, I’m healthy and not an artist. But what else? Am I an outsider, or am I just traveling onward to where I belong?
Or am I too cheap to take Uber?
copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue