Suzy's Rules for Public Transportation

For the Passengers:

1. Shower every day.

2. If you cannot achieve #1, at least wear clean clothes, not the funky-ass sweater and pants that have been on your floor for the past six weeks because you're too lazy to do your laundry. Your mom did not come with you to college. Learn to use the washer. That's what it's there for.

3. Wear deodorant. I don't care what you've read about aluminum causing Alzheimer's. If you get on the bus one more time and raise your arm to hold on to the bar and I have to smell your vile armpit, you'll be dead before you could get the disease anyway.

4. Take off your backpack/purse/messenger bag. It takes up the space another person could comfortably occupy, and when you turn around suddenly, I don't want to be knocked into the doors down those really painful stairs. And you're not a messenger. You don't have the balls or the scars.

5. If the bus is full, move back. I don't care that the chick you're chatting up is sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. I will push you, and you'll look really stupid when you fall over and land with your head in the lap of the SCA guy who hasn't changed clothes in weeks (for him, see numbers 1 and 2.

6. If you're sitting on the aisle and the person next to you has to get off, STAND UP AND MOVE OUT OF THE WAY. Don't just turn to the side. I will stick my ass in your face and you won't like it unless you're a dog or you swing that way. In that case, maybe that's why you don't get up. Freak.

7. Don't talk to me. Ever.

8. If I'm sitting next to the window and the seat next to me is free, only take it if EVERY OTHER seat on the bus is taken, even if the only other one left is next to the SCA guy from #5.

9. If you do have to sit next to me, I have a big ass, but it only takes up one seat; I've checked. Don't sit so close that I can feel your leg through the fabric of my pants. I don't let my husband do that.

10. If you are on your phone, don't speak so loudly that the other bus riders are unwilling participants in your conversation. I don't give a shit that he so totally looked at you in class and that he's just sooooo fine. I also don't care about your smug, self-righteous crusade or your argument with your girlfriend. She should dump your ass for letting everyone hear how you're sorry for forgetting to call her the night before because you were out getting drunk with your reprobate friends.

11. If you are the first person in line to get on the bus, do it fast, have your money/pass out and don't ask questions. I will have no problem stepping over your trampled body if you make me wait.

12. If an old person gets on the bus and you're in one of the front seats and the only other available one is in the back, get up. I will pull you out of the seat if I have to. I don't give a shit if you're tired from your night of 20-something debauchery. Grow up and pull up your pants.

13. Say thank you to the bus driver. His/her job sucks.

For the Driver:

1. Don't pull up so far beyond the bus stop that we have to run to get it. I know you do it because you hate your job and you like to see us pant and get all sweaty in our work clothes, but take out your aggression on other drivers, not on your passengers.

2. Leave the heat off at all times. 100 people + a heater (even in the dead of winter) = nasty

3. Don't check out the college girls. You're 50 and it's disgusting. Take off the Tom Cruise in Topgun shades. You look like you should be driving a Camaro, which, come to think of it, you probably do. Pick up women your own age.

4. Don't call out the names of buildings on campus in a singsong voice. We know where we are, and you reminding us just makes us that much pissier about having to go to work.

5. Don't sail by stops because there might be another bus behind you or because you're running late. It's your fault that you're late, so don't make us late, too.

6. Don't, under any circumstances, start driving when an old person has gotten on and they haven't taken a seat yet. Do you want to have a broken hip on your conscience?

7. Don't tap the breaks. It makes us (well, me) carsick. You do that again, and I'll throw up all over you.

Send me any suggestions of rules I might have missed. I'd be happy to include them.