The thing I don't understand is the people who won't get up/MOVE THEIR PACKAGES when a disabled or elderly person comes on board. Especially school kids!
I don't know what juliana, Hec, tommyrot and other present and past SFistas have observed, but it's always seemed to me that high school through college students are startlingly good and alert about giving up their seats. I mean, the majority of
everyone
tries to stay seated and ignore the seat-needer, but I do see kids giving up their seats about as much as any other group. When I was waddly and pregnant, a couple of times I'd get on the bus and see a pack of teenage boys turn on one of their own and start whapping him with their baseball hats, saying, "Dude! Give your seat to the lady, dude!"
They're definitely better about it than men in their 30s-50s, who are horrid (again, not uniformly, but mostly indeed).
And it breaks my heart, but elderly Chinese ladies are always trying to give up their seats to me when I have Matilda. Often while some perfectly strapping able-bodied young fella is sitting next to them studiously examining the text messages on his Blackberry so as not to have to meet the stinkeye everyone else is giving him.
I was just gonna post that it seems that folks in Minneapolis and Chicago are worse about giving up seats for the elderly and disabled. Then I was trying to remember if I've ever had that problem in San Francisco while I was on crutches. Finally I realized that I've never been on crutches while in San Francisco.
I don't think it's uniformly horrible in Chicago. There are some disabled passengers I see frequently on my morning bus route, and people are pretty awesome about moving out of the way and folding up handicapped seating.
I don't know what juliana, Hec, tommyrot and other present and past SFistas have observed, but it's always seemed to me that high school through college students are startlingly good and alert about giving up their seats.
I'd agree.
I currently hate my commute, since the easiest bus for me to use is the one that comes from/goes to the Marina (which is where we keep the yuppies). Overindulged asshattedness abounds on that bus.
(Which means people are not so good about giving up their seats. Or sharing the seat. Or moving out of the way so people can disembark. Jackholes.)
Most people are pretty good about making room and even helping move obstacles (or at least attempting to) when I'm pushing Dad's wheelchair. There are the occasional folks who willfully stand in the way even when facing our approach, but fortunately it turns out metal footrests are less sensitive than ankles and quite persuasive when the twain meet.
(which is where we keep the yuppies)
We have Trixies and Chads.
And I will admit to a mean pleasure in watching people who obviously don't regularly take public transit.
I have a big old physical and psychological space rant...or did. I don't have the energy to translate it though.
Basically, though, it's way past time that I was no longer surprising. I don't expect to be typical, nor demand it, but women who want to be bigger
and
stronger shouldn't be heralded by such wonderment and disbelief.
When I lived in SF proper, way back when, I say a fight between two 70ish women, because one of them was already seated in the preferential seating area, when the other one got on board, and the second woman was determined to make her give up her seat. There weren't physical blows traded, but the driver had to split them up.
On a completely different note (sort of), do people use the word "agita"?. Someone at work just did, and I had to look up what it meant.
