bus fights & growing up in the city

aah. fights on the bus. remember those back in school years when kids would get into fights on the bus? I was forced to go down memory lane a little more than I cared to this afternoon when a man bantering with some women standing near me insulted another man a few rows up. i was smack dab in the middle of both of them. sweet.
a couple of interesting things occurred in my mind as the threat of a fight lingered between "get up, bitch!" and "let's get off the motherfucking bus then!":

**I should stop them. No I shouldn't; I am not at work. This is not a bar fight. I am an mtc passenger right now. someone else should stop them. who are they with? (looking around, trying to be low key).

**Why isn't the bus driver intervening? (As though I was back in my school years on a yellow bus - no these men would not be written up & sent to the behavoir room when we all arrived at our destinations). The bus driver was probably not intervening because she either wasn't aware of the situation in the very back of her bus or because she was waiting it out to see if a fight would indeed occur.

**I hope these guys don't have any weapons..I am in the middle of this. There have been those recent violent incidents on buses lately.

I immediatly thought myself as a scaredy cat & mentally slapped my hand for these thoughts, specifically the last one.

I like to think of myself as pretty street smart. I grew up in the city. I went to city schools. I waded through fights in my high school hallway & sometimes I still remember some of the more severe ones. As I grew up my peers and I were very much aware of the stigma our inner city school system had & thrived on it when we encountered suburban kids on field trips such as college fairs & The Festival of Nations. Nearly 11 years out of high school I chuckle at this. But none the less, those experiences have shaped my adult self to shrug off warnings against waiting at certain bus stops downtown or riding my bicycle home late at night. And in that one moment on the bus today when I was legitimately concerned for my safety, I scoffed at my own fears.

In the end the man who was insulted was shooed off the bus by his friends all of whom challenged the other man to get off too and see what might happen. He did not & I was relieved. No punches were thrown. No weapons were brandished. I stood up & went to the front of the bus getting off a stop early. As I walked home I thought about it all. A very minor incident in the big scheme of things. But my attitude haunted me. There's a little bit of self rightousness there on my part. And I guess I need to work on that. xoxx.