The First Day of the Real World

Onto the real world. No more walking five minutes from my college apartment to the one class I had a week. A wake-up call. You would think that growing up in Boston, I would know that there's no easy way to get into the city, especially the Seaport, from Arlington. But here I am, in shock that I'm spending an hour and a half on public transportation to get back to the comfort of my apartment each day. 

I realized today that the bus doesn't even pretend to run on the schedule that's posted online and in the Harvard T stop. Coming when they wish and then driving like the biggest Massholes you've ever seen, to cut off cars and make up for the fact that they're constantly running behind. Are you late if you've never once been on time? Or is that just the new, unpublished schedule? Like a new unwritten rule.

The 9-to-5's commute is a waiting game. A time of no real purpose. Should I try to read a book or look at my phone or people watch? I've decided I'll go with the third option. It's too hard to focus on a book when the person next to you is screaming at their phone. It's almost as if it's not your volume level that's what's preventing your husband from hearing you, it's the thirty feet of dirt and concrete above us, forcing all of us in our business casual outfits and tired expressions to listen to what you want your husband to buy from the store. 

It's as if we're in purgatory, in between the hell of the corporate world and the heaven of our homes. Each time we step foot into a red line stop that reeks of urine or a bus with a driver who is trying to beat a record of most red lights ran a day, we are in limbo, waiting to be either taken to the luxury of heaven or to the monotony of hell. It's like Lost, except we don't get to tan in our purgatory. I guess they probably had it worse off with the whole plane crash thing, but still, my legs are paler than any summer before. 

It's a new story every day, a new update text to my mom about whatever character is catching everyone's eye on today's commute. Maybe in someone else's story, I'm the one that they watch in their waiting game, but I'd like to think that if so, they're just admiring my outfits and wishing they were me.