When I was a little kid, the coolest guy in our apartment building was named Hank. He had a red duck tail hairdo. He wore cowboy boots. He was a bus driver. I always thought that I was the only kid on Earth who equated buses with coolness. I like buses. I should hope I do. I'd be an even more miserable bastard than I already am if I didn't.Completely by accident, I stumbled upon the weblog of a man in Brazil who really, really likes buses. Nothing there but buses. Check it out.
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From the moment my son was born he demonstrated an acute interest in cars. Nothing special there, except his first words weren't "mum" or "dad" but BMW ; then Ferrari. By the age of two and a bit he could recite entire chapters of car models and associated minutiae.
I was proud, certainly, but even more so I felt guilty since I didn't own a car. He would have been overjoyed if I was a mechanic by trade.
The fascination for cars gradually began to wane, but an obsession with buses quickly replaced it. Taxis too.
He has an entire shelf full of buses from all over the world. Rare models and obsolete vehicles ; double deckers and American Greyhounds. I like to think it's partly because of the journeys they enable people to undertake - the sheer embodiment of moving somebody from 'a' to 'b'.
It's very cool, I think. As soon as I get a halfway decent connection speed reinstated I believe I'll check out this Brazillian dude's blog. There is definitely something magical in taking a bus to a strange exotic place.
My favourite is the pink bus right at the top of his page. You wouldn't get a bus painted like that here.
See, I think that riding buses is a fun adventure, but there's active propaganda against public transit in this country. A friend had to go to a doctor about 70 miles from here. I got him a timetable, explained where he'd need to transfer and sent him on his way. He called me up later to say that he'd had a wonderful time, that everything had gone great and that he was very pleased with his bus journey. Then he called his grown kids, "Oh Dad, I can't believe you'd sink that low. My own dad riding the shame train. That's pitiful. You own a car." He got embarrassed. He didn't even know he was uncool. After that, he started paying four times as much in gas and tolls just so no one would think he was a second class citizen.
I'd love to see your son's bus collection. Toy buses are hard to come by here. I have a little collection, along with a collection of tin rocket ships.
God I'm so uncool. Buses, ukuleles- what a nerd. I'm happy.
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