Public interventions

I had a short but interesting bus ride home tonight. I'm not sure about my part in the night's festivities, but maybe laying it out will help me sort it.

Macforce sent us all home early tonight (4 pm) after we opened very late today (11 am). I didn't ride my bike because there's a foot of snow on the ground. I didn't drive, because there's a foot of snow on the ground and Dev would have been stranded at home. I didn't have Dev drive me to work because there's a foot of snow on the ground and she has better things to do than schlepp me an hour in to work on deeply snowed-in side roads. So I rode the bus to work. On the way out, Jamie offered to drive me part way. I accepted and saved myself the pain of waiting for the bus in high winds on top of the Hawthorne Bridge.

I walked 5 blocks to the bus stop. I got there just as a bus pulled in; lucky me. The bus was crowded front to back and only standing room left. I squeezed in. A young lady sat to my left and was talking with the women next to her about feeling ill. After about 10 minutes of being on the bus, she called for the trash can. A couple of passengers handed it back to her. She got sick into the trash can. Quickly and quietly. At the next big transition stop (a stop where about one third of the bus debarks and new passengers replace them completely), the young lady hands the trash can back to the bus driver and politely tells her what happens. I was moving toward the back of the bus to make room for the new passengers and heard the young lady talking to the bus driver.

I didn't get far towards the back of the bus though. People were boarding through the back door. The bus driver couldn't see through the crowd. She called for everyone to move toward the back so new passengers could get on. Somewhere around 7 or 8 folks boarded through the back door. Progress towards the back of the bus stalled. The driver called for us to move back again. Someone shouted that people were coming in through the back door. A couple of the people boarding turned around and got back off the bus. One young lady in a brown fake leather jacket and her shorter friend stayed on and made no move to go farther back on the bus.

The young lady who got sick a few moments earlier started squirming her way through the crowd. She was yelling at the people coming on through the back door. Shaming them for causing problems. I don't remember the words so much as the outraged tone of her voice. The rogue passenger in the brown coat said something to her friend and laughed. The young lady who got sick zeroed in on her and yelled some more about being inconsiderate. Two or three more pleasantries were exchanged and then the two girls started throwing punches. After one or two good swings each, they had locked a deathgrip on each other. The girl in the brown coat had a fist-full of the sick girl's hair and the stayed locked head to head and shoulder on shoulder over a couple of passengers.

The lady in the outer seat of the pair onto which the altercants had draped themselves looked very uncomfortable; maybe terrified. She had the blond narrow features I always associate with Poland or the former Eastern Bloc nations of Europe. She squeezed out from under the girls and excused herself. I think I imagined a Slavic accent. Passenger on the bus were getting unsettled. A couple yelled at the fighting girls to act like adults. Some were trying yell at the girls to be reasonable. A couple of passengers said something along the lines of "someone break up the fight" and didn't make a move to get involved. The women banged around a few times. Passengers in the aisle moved as far forward in the bus as they could, streaming past me, which left me on one side and a big dude on the other side containing the girls from bouncing around on more passengers.

A guy in a seat directly in front of the girls started trying to pull the brown jacketed girl's grip free from the other girls hair. One of the girls kept saying "let go of my hair." It was impossible to tell which combatant said it. I started helping the the gentleman pry open the fist holding the hair. The jacketed girl's friend was on the other side saying something vaguely resembling an effort for her friend to be reasonable. Finally we got the two girls apart. The flew back at each other. We accomplished a second separation. The girl in the brown jacket went to throw a punch and I grabbed her hand to stop her. She glared at me and said something to the effect of "You better let go of me!" I let go, not really knowing what else to do. I didn't want her to hit me. And I'm not real keen in getting into a fight with a woman, particularly not in such a public place.

After we got them separated a third time they yelled some more. The girl in the brown jacket and her friend got off the bus. The came back for a broken cell phone and a glove. Then they wandered into the crowd at the transit station. They knew the police had been called, but neither they nor anyone on the bus seemed to think the police would be there anytime soon. After I pointed out the girl to the bus driver, the bus pulled out. We had already been stopped too long and the incident was done.

The guy who had formed the blocker on the other side of the fight said thanks. Two women thanked me for doing something. One looked like she might work fro TriMet. I really didn't feel like I had done anything. I kept extra people from getting hurt. I helped contain the fight but I didn't really help to stop it. I didn't know how to stop it. I felt shaky the rest of the ride home. The dude in the glasses wished the young lady who got sick a better evening. I got off the bus four stops later, still shaky. I told the young lady who had gotten sick that for what it was worth, I appreciated the fact that she had said something about the people coming onto the bus the wrong way. And I told her that I hoped she had a much better evening.

My insides still felt woogy by the time I had tromped through the snow and walked in the door at home. I really don't like conflict. I don't like how my brain seizes and prevents me from thinking of alternative courses of action. And I hate the lack of certainty that I'm doing the right thing; I know that I had to do something, but I didn't know if it was the right thing.

So much for tonight's confessional.