wait...

There's nothing more degrading than running for public transportation. Well, maybe there are a few things, but huffing it for a bus doesn't get you any cash in your g-string, or boners for your audience (usually). Some would say that the act of riding the bus itself is degrading, let alone breaking a sweat over it. I don't really mind, but I suppose I haven't really been around long enough to feel bad about not acquiring my own personal shame cart.

You're fully aware that the bus has the upper-hand in the relationship--often confusing you, making you wait around, follow its schedule. But you're human, and sometimes you forget that, for whatever reason, you took each shoe off in a separate room of the house. So there you are, letting out that throaty groan of frustration every so often until you find it and get your ass out the door.

You start doing some kind of math that you don't really understand once you lay eyes on the beefy monster. Like, how far away you are, how much time you think you have to get to it--really, just gauging whether or not you actually need to bring yourself to run. As you go over it in your mind, you figure it wouldn't hurt to pick up the pace so you walk with purpose until it transitions into a mom jeans, windbreaker-worthy power walk. The run starts when you know it's absolutely necessary, and even then you're aware that you may have started too late. If you've got stuff in your hands there's an added embarrassment, it makes your run look funny and probably slows you down--or you might drop it and reach entirely new levels of pathetic.

Whether they stop for you or not, it's a degrading scene. If they don't, there you are stranded with one arm out getting ditched by public transportation, while the punctual bastards in the back half look at you and smirk in a that's-a-shame kind of way. If the driver does stop for you it can go one of two ways: they're too sweet to make you feel bad about it and happily welcome you on, OR they act like you've really put them out and maybe make some smarmy comment about "the next time."

I suppose the reason it feels degrading in the moment is just because you're really only using this service to take you from A to B, so you can avoid real problems that come as a result of laziness or neglect. But when you can't even make the bus in time, that's when you really feel like shit.