August 2004

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There wasn't anything funny about the encounter, really. It was one of those encounters that you read about happening in someone else's life, but don't think you'll see. At least not if you live my fairly solitary life.

Anyway, yesterday I was on the bus heading to work, when two of my fellow passengers got started arguing. Loudly. About whether or not the young man should have told the older woman she was being cruel to her two dogs for carrying them in a backpack.

No, she didn't have them on the bus. Apparently, from what I can piece together, he had seen her somewhere else a while back, when she did have the dogs with her, and had stated his thought that she was being cruel. They picked the argument up today.

If you've read here much at all, you know I am a dog lover. You may well imagine that I do not endorse cruelty to dogs. But again, from what I could piece together, the dogs in question were tiny and the backpack roomy enough. The man seemed to be most vehemently opposed not to her having them in the pack to begin with, but that she didn't take them out and make them walk when she wasn't riding the bus.

So he suggested, loudly, that she should ask everyone on the bus what they thought. (What I was thinking was that I hoped to heaven she didn't ask anyone; since I happened to be the lucky soul sitting in the section of seats between the two arguers I figured I'd be the first one asked. I was prepared to say I had no opinion, and if pressed, to say that I only knew Golden Retrievers, who wouldn't fit in a backpack.)

What she did do was ask him his name. When he didn't respond, she said that was all right, she could describe him. To which he said nothing. She said something else; I don't remember what, but he asked her at that point to leave him alone. And she asked him what he was going to do about it.

And that was when I got scared. I had not been comfortable about the exchange between them, and since I had already studied the contents of both my handbag and my totebag, had tried to get very interested in reading the signs posted above the bus windows. But at the point that someone was planning to do something about someone else, I wanted the hell out of the line of fire.

Mercifully, the man decided the right answer to her question was to do nothing. Eventually, they got off at their respective stops.

I was definitely glad to see them leave.