by Paul Ruth

Created on: July 09, 2008

Standing at the bus stop is more of an exercise of patience than it is for the health. Quietly waiting for the ride reminds on of being a child and waiting to be picked up from an after school program and you mother is running late. I look down the street one way, and then I look down the street the other way. I really don't know why. I just need the bus going the way I am going. The public library is serving as my research hub during my graduate stay. I am currently studding urban life. The usual Suburban gaze into the poverty that seems to baffle people who have never seen or experience it. I myself grew up in a middle class suburb. Not the kind with the picket fence and all of that, but the mixed of office workers and public servants and union factory workers. Nothing really came hard in my life, but then again nothing has ever really came easy.

I saw the bus bumping down the rough road of Detroit city. I live off campus and a Michigan February is too cold to walk, so I ride the bus like orientation told me to. I have been studding urban life for some time, about three months now. My parents call me an expert because of all of the statistics I know and the people I can talk about and introduce. Most people find me strange for wanting to help out at the soup kitchen and free medical center by campus. Unusual for a person my age, they all say. Then again, if people knew my professor of urban literature they would see me as a mere student.

The bus stops at a humble pace, almost like an old nun who is unsure about life. I gladly look up to the overworked bus driver and swipe my card. All of the students have a pre-paid card while the poorer people don't have enough money at one time for a pre-paid card. I learned that early in the semester and I got excited to see it in practice. Walking toward the middle back of the bus so not to stand out, I sat with a satiation. I am riding the bus just like the people I read about. I took my professor's suggestion and looked around at the people who are on the bus in the evening, which it was becoming. It was not late enough for the factories to be getting out, but it was late enough for the part time jobs to be changing into their final hours. I see the high school teens coming home from their low wage job or their after school rambling. I see the men who did not want to be bothered, and of course I see the bum drinking a paper bag. I was always told by my parents that it was not polite to stare, so I didn't. I keep my eyes

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