Fairly recently, I traveled on public transportation for the first time in almost 7 years. When I lived in New York, that was my normal and I used to understand bus and train talk. However in New Jersey, it was all lost to me and I was spoiled with the luxury of a car. When college started, that had to change and this time it’s a whole new ball game with a new location and a solo travel.
Welcome Week was my test run so to speak. In theory, it was easy wake up early in case of errors, walk to the bus stop, ride the bus to the train stop, ride the train to the bus stop, and then take Bus 32 to the school. Really simple — walk then bus then train then bus then reach school. As it turned out, it didn’t work out so well. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.
I woke up at 5:30 am and reached the bus stop by 6:00. This is where my first real life encounter happened. I was harassed and interrogated by an older man for my name, number, and age. I kept asking him to stop talking to me and tried to end the one-sided conversation, but it did nothing, until it just stopped.
After that whole encounter, I was already over it. As soon as my stop came, I booked it off the bus and when I came out, I was near a very dangerous part of Philly and my GPS was glitching out. It kept telling me to go around the block and constantly redirected me. Then I saw what I thought would be my savior: a police car parked right in front of me with a few officers around. However, it was just another instance where I was wrong. As soon as I went close to the officer, she yelled for everyone to stand back and declared the place an active crime scene. I hightailed it out of there.
Somehow, I had a peaceful train ride once I found the stop, but then it came to bus 32. Don’t get me wrong, I know how problematic buses can be; I’ve been through it. But there is no way that a bus just passes by a stop with a person standing there clear as day. To make things worse, I waited 15 minutes for the next bus, but it still wasn’t there. It’s sad to say but this was my near breaking point. I crossed the street and asked a man running a lotto stand, with tears in my eyes, if he knows what’s going on. He didn’t and all he did was kept trying to sell me tickets. I made it on the next bus and even though I got to the school by 10:00 am, it was still 2 hours later than I was supposed to be.
Now I’ll tell you how I really got to Jefferson. Remember that man harassing me? Well the only reason he stopped was because of the lady sitting across from me staring him down. Not only that, but afterwards she came and found me and asked if I was okay. The police officer wasn’t able to help me, but a security guard saw me look lost and asked me if I needed any help, leaving her post to help guide me to the proper train entrance. Lastly, the only reason I made it on that bus was a woman at the lotto stand. She quite literally dropped everything and told me about an app that would work better for the bus and not to worry. She waited until the bus came and made sure I got on safely.
I understand that after reading this, you probably think I’m incompetent which I kind of felt at first, but that’s not the point of this. The point of this story was to show how no matter what you think, there are still people out there who would help you, even going out of their way to help. I know you shouldn’t approach strangers, but you can honestly find help in the most unexpected ways. I can never truly express how grateful I am to the people that helped me, but I know I can strive to be like them and be that help to someone else. That’s something I strive to do — help in any way, shape or I can in order to be a person that someone comes home grateful for meeting. That is something that you all should take away too, be that person for someone else.