Thank You For Riding New York City Transit

Okay, Okay, OKAY! – I’m finally getting around to it.  I’m finally ready to keep track of my daily adventures on the bus around NYC with my little city mice.  I’ve been commuting on a New York City bus with my daughter Liliana since she was about 4 months old.  My maternity leave ended and I had to return to work and put my baby girl into daycare.  From that very first ride, it has been an adventure – something as simple as riding the bus with a baby every day has been at times hilarious and at times downright infuriating.  I have recently returned to work after my second maternity leave, and I am now doing that same commute with Lily, now age 3 as well as my little Nugget, John Diego, 4 ½ months.  After much encouragement from friends, I thought it would be fun to share my adventures via a blog.  I’ve been sharing my crazy stories via my Facebook page for the past 3 years, and on every other post someone tells me I should write a book.   So, this isn’t the book, but I figure it’s a good place to start! 

We take the bus south about 55 blocks every morning to go to daycare and work.  Luckily, mercifully, our wonderful daycare provider is right across a courtyard from my office.  Then for the commute home, I pick up the kids and we go back to the bus, heading north to our bus stop that’s only a couple of blocks away from our apartment.  Simple, right?

Chapter 1 – It’s okay, I like it.

                After 3 years of doing this commute with my daughter, I have an arsenal of stories to share, but my favorite, and the one I will start off with, would be the day someone “freshened” my daughter’s face and hands for me after a creepy run-in with a wanna-be-grandpa.

It was in the spring and Lily and I were headed home on the bus.  We lived on 94^th street at the time. (we have since moved a bit further south, but still ride the same bus). Lily was about 6 months old.  A very large man was standing in front of the seat we were sitting in, holding onto the pole.  At one point the driver stopped a bit short, and the man proceeded to sort of swing ¾ of the way around the pole.  His movement is difficult to describe, but it was sort of a lazy, almost child-like, go-with-the-flow kind of thing.  I think he even said, “whooaaaaa” as he swung around.  He ended up virtually on my lap, which was of great concern, as Lily was in one of those chic, Scandinavian baby carriers strapped to my chest.  Fortunately, he hurt neither me nor the baby (nor himself) and apologized at great length for almost crushing my legs.  We then started to chat and he and his wife began asking me all kinds of questions about the baby. 

Being approximately 6 months old, Lily was inclined to put EVERYTHING in her mouth, so when he offered her his index finger (something I came to learn that strangers LOVE to do.  Strangers LOVE to give babies their index finger) – Lily of course pulled it towards her face and tried to put his finger in her mouth.  I said to her, “honey, we don’t do that”, and I had to physically push his hand away because he was going to let her put his finger in her mouth.  As I pushed his hand away from her face he said, “it’s okay, I like it”. 

 “It’s okay, I like it”  -- I wasn’t really even sure how to respond to that comment that I found disturbing on so many levels.   Upon seeing the confused and probably grossed out look on my face, his wife said, “you’ll have to forgive him, he really wants grandkids”, as if that somehow excuses him from allowing, no, not just allowing but WANTING babies to suck on his fingers on public transportation. 

After the large man and his wife got off at the next stop, the woman sitting next to me went off, “I can’t believe what he just did!  I saw the whole thing! I could tell how uncomfortable you were! – what is wrong with some people? – It was obvious that you didn’t want him touching your baby, and that he was going to let her put his fingers in her mouth? – Disgusting!” – At that point she pulled about a dozen little individually-wrapped wipes out of her purse.  She opened one up, and before I knew what was happening, she wiped off Lily’s face and hands, and then gave me the rest of the wipes to keep in my purse. “You should take these with you everywhere, because you never know when some idiot is going to touch your baby and this way you can always wipe off her hands and face”, she warned.

When I got home I told my husband the entire story from beginning to end, starting with the heavy man falling on my lap right up through the woman next to me wiping Lily off.  Then I pulled out the bunch of wipes she gave me to keep, at which point I noticed that they were actually “Summer’s Eve Feminine Cleansing Cloths” – This woman carries vaginal wipes around by the handful??? Yes, that is what she shared with me, THAT is what she wiped off lily’s face and hands with.  Perfect.