Be careful I close the door

Hear

One more step as we all enter that world of 20 seats that is the bus and that connects the most remote destinations, from Lugano to Barrancas de Belgrano; from Puente Alsina to Benavídez Station; from Puerto Madero to Lomas del Mirador. And with clarifications for all tastes: Alpargatas Roundabout, Ford Factory, Semi-fast highway, Metrobús, Let’s go to the Book Fair! The passenger gets on and goes. It may go slowly, because the bus driver sped up too much, went over schedule and now has to make time; or fast, because it is late, so it speeds up and makes the traffic lights optional.

Up goes the country: the lady who grabs the baby, the backpack, the model and makes sure the person behind doesn’t open her wallet; the one that is underlining Rolón’s book; the one who comes shopping with three bags and already feels that the cheese is crying out for a refrigerator; the three secondary school repeaters who copy their homework in the back seats; the lost ones who notice how the bus does not follow the route that Google Maps says; and the usual punga who is waiting to snatch a cell phone and run. If there is no punga on board, the punga is you.

The bus is for traveling, true, but how many are eating, listening to music, studying for college, gossiping on social media and sleeping. Mattress offers in 12 installments, with springs, with a foam base or promoted by Sergio Goycochea They will never be able to measure up to that bus that goes slowly, in winter, almost empty, along the cobblestone street, with the sun’s rays warming the atmosphere. That bus in which you lean your head against the window and surrender to the confidence of waking up at the stop, although perhaps you open your eyes and are in the terminal, behind the Central Market, at dawn, robbed, tied to the seat, graffitied and regretting having fallen asleep.

Many think that the collective is an object, an inanimate apparatus that has no life of its own, but it is rather like the teapot in Beauty and the Beast and smells the fear of not arriving, the desperation of those who are in a hurry and the temperature of those who He goes up dead from the heat. It will appear when the passenger waiting at the stop lights a cigarette; you will smell that the SUBE is not loaded; will go through the opposite path to what one expects; It will come full when there is fatigue and empty when the trip is a few blocks; Their occupied seats will be released when one is at the other end and pregnant women will appear everywhere when one is about to sit down.; and always but always it will change course for the worse.

At the wheel is the best thing the old woman did, which is the kid who drives. He was born with the light blue shirt on and his first words were: “There is room at the bottom.” He is a driver, psychologist, human GPS and vigilante. The driving record qualifies you to drive passenger buses and get into the pineapples if the situation warrants it. There are two types: those that allow another passenger to save the person who boarded with the SUBE unloaded and those that do not.

Some of them are from the humanist branch and they bring the bus closer to the curb, wait for the one who comes running in the distance with his hand raised and continue on by when there are already people hanging from the stirrup. They allow street vendors and let the retired women with monkeys come down through the front door.

Legend has it that there are no retired drivers. Most of them are in the Borda, walking in circles, smoking, repeating phrases like: “Come up, madam”, “I already heard the bell” and “I’m not going through Rivadavia”.