What is a typical day? Is up down? Why ask why? All kidding aside, this is an interesting question for me because something I’ve come to realize is that each week reveals itself to have its own personality, and within each week, the seven days in between feel typical compared within that week, but can very easily feel atypical when compared to another week.

Even the magic 8 ball is against me. “Is today a typical day?” “My sources say no.”

If this all sounds convoluted- it is! One of the reasons I blog is to document my “mundane” experiences – because apparently my “mundane” experiences sound made up. If only! The expression truth is stranger than fiction definitely applies to my everyday living.

Rather than describe my current day, I’ve opted to talk about one of my commuter experiences from 2021 that was typically atypical for me. It was August, and was reporting for duty into the office a few days a week after being comfortably productive nearly 18 months in a magical palace I call “home”.

At this point, it was week 3 of going into the office. As I stood at the side of the busy road, waiting in the hot (90 degrees at 7am) and relatively humid rays of the early morning August sun, I thought “what better time of year to start commuting again.”

Nothing wakes me up faster than gasoline fumes from passing cars amidst the beaming sunlight of a typical August morning.

While standing at the bus stop, I noticed an ant hill near me. Great. I paced around to avoid the ants. Last thing I needed was to have ants crawl up me. As I paced, one of my neighbors who works for the county walked up- let’s call him Gene. Gene walked up and expressed joy that he had not missed the bus.

“I ran like hell yesterday because the bus driver showed up 5 minutes early”. Luckily for Gene, I recently discovered that the local bus company now had an app that could track where the bus was in real time. I demonstrated the app to Gene and forgot about pacing around to avoid the ants. Before I knew it, the bus was here.

During the “before” time, I would have been lucky to board at this point as the bus was usually packed by the time we reached the park and ride- the last stop before heading into the freeway. During the “return to office that only my company and a handful of county offices seemed to enforce in 2021” time, it was pretty much myself, Gene and maybe 3-4 other people on the bus ride into work. Which meant I could sit anywhere and be far away from anyone.

I plopped down in a seat towards the back of the bus. As the bus pulled away from the stop,  I glanced down at my sneakers and noticed a handful of ants crawling around on my shoelaces. I quickly brushed them off with my hand. At that point I figured I must have stood too close to the ant hill when I wasn’t pacing around. No big deal – just a few ants.

I then turned my head  towards my left leg and froze in absolute terror- my pant leg was engulfed with hundreds of tiny black ants. I closed my eyes for a second then opened them thinking maybe, just maybe I had fallen asleep for a minute and this was all in my head (hey falling asleep while commuting to work is a perk of public transportation). I opened my eyes and my leg was still covered by hundreds of moving creatures.

The stuff nightmares are made of- oh wait I’m actually awake.

I took a deep breath to assess the situation. In my head I kept telling myself “don’t scream don’t scream don’t scream don’t react don’t move don’t do anything”. I didn’t dare draw attention to myself.

Thankfully, no one was sitting in the aisle next to me or behind me or in front of me. Confident that none of the other passengers had a view of me, I quickly rifled through my backpack (which was sitting on the otherside of me on the non ant infested side) and pulled the cardboard backing from a spiral notebook I had tucked away and starting scraping the ants off my leg and onto the ground.

Who knew this doubles as a tool to fling ants off oneself?

I quietly stepped on whatever ants were immediately underfoot, but I recognized that I was grossly outnumbered. While I succeeded in scraping the ants off me, they were now pooling around in the seat next to me and milling around on the floor. I had to escape the ants.

I had to time this in a way so that none of the other passengers would notice I changed seats. We were quickly approaching the park and ride- that would be my window to move, but I’d have to do it before any passengers at the park and ride boarded. I quiety slid my backpack on while fanning the ants in the seat next to me to avoid them crawling back on me.

As the bus pulled up to the curb I saw there were only 2 passengers waiting to board. There were 3 passengers sitting towards the front, but only one passenger sitting in a row ahead of me but behind the other passengers. As the bus pulled up, I quietly slid out of the seat, and stealthily moved up 4 rows from where I was. The one passenger I had to pass had their eyes glued to their phone. Success. I made it into the seat undetected before any new passengers boarded. I felt home free.

Settled into my new seat, I took a deep breath. I didn’t know what to do. Should I tell the bus driver? If I do, what do I say?

• “Hi Mr. Bus Driver, I apparently boarded the bus full of ants which no one seemed to notice and now the back of the bus is infested.”
• “There are ants back there- for all I know they were there already there when I sat down.” This actually entered my mind- where the ants already there? Was it a coincidence that I was fixated on ants at my bus stop? Did someone else bring ants on the bus?
• “Ein bus ait ‘ants’?” I’m pretty sure the driver didn’t know German but technically I could inform the driver of ants this way.

Then what? Would the driver kick me off the bus? Would I be banned? Would the driver make everyone deboard to wait for another bus? On the outside I sat cool as a cucumber smiling while wearing my sunglasses. On the inside I was panicking. I imagined myself in an interrogation room at the bus company being questioned by a surly bus driver demanding to know how the ants got there. I don’t even know if such a thing exists but my mind created that image at that moment.

The bus pulled away and conitnued to sit there with a stupid grin on my face. After we’d been on the freeway for about five minutes, I looked down and saw… about 5 ants. DAMN!!! The ants were slowly trickling forward. I quietly smushed every ant I saw with my foot. I felt like I was playing a video game in slow motion. About a line of 5-6 six at a time would slowly move forward from under my seat. I’d kill those, only for another round of 5-6 to appear.

It was like playing a slo-mo live action game of Space Invaders.

This was all nerve wracking and went on for 20 minutes. As the bus drove up the exit ramp and waited at the light, one passenger from the park and ride walked up to the driver.

“Hi- there are a TON of ants in the back of the bus”.

Oh crap – I could feel my throat closing up. I was about to be busted. I thought for sure someone would remember where I was when I boarded. I stopped breathing as the bus driver reacted to this news…

By shrugging his shoulders and saying “oh ok”. And then the light went green and the bus driver continued on with the route. The. bus. driver. did. nothing. No reaction. Did not care.

I deboarded at the stop before my typical stop. I just wanted off of that bus. When I stepped off, I waited for the bus to drive away before shaking my backpack and patting down my pant legs, shaking my feet and just making sure none of those little monsters were attached to me. I could not believe I was a hot mess for the past 35 minutes, desperately plotting escape from the ants while also fretting that I’d be banned for life from riding the bus and all the while the authority figure on the bus gave zero cares that the bus was about to be overtaken by ants from outerspace (okay yes I’m exaggerating at this one).

When I got to my office I stared at a blank monitor for five minutes before realizing I had not docked my computer. I was relieved to be at my desk not covered in ant bites but I was still traumatized by the ride into work. Thankfully, the bus ride home was uneventful- the bus I boarded home was not the same bus and it was a different driver. Normally I’d cap this with a lesson learned but – I really don’t know that I learned anything except don’t get covered in ants before boarding public transportation.

Have you ever been covered in ants? Or any other type of bug? Or encountered ants on the bus? Do tell!