When the Homily is about Immunology

The Dichotomous bus rides

I get a rather sharp contrast between rural life and city life in the context of the bus rides I take each day. In the morning, Kitsap County Transit takes me to the ferry and King County Metro takes me from the ferry to work (in the afternoon the process is of course reversed). Besides the fact that Metro is constantly losing and finding bus passes, there is also many other differences that speak loudly to how life is different (in my book: preferable) in rural areas as opposed to urban or suburban regions.

Last week, right after the snow started to clear, a Metro supervisor appeared on the Kitsap bus taking me home. He told me that he was coming over because he'd purchased a vehicle from someone in Silverdale and was now coming to pick it up. As we rode, the bus stopped and someone was about to get on when he realized he didn't nearly have the right change and so was apprehensive about parting with the larger bill he did have. The instant the situation was apparent to the people in the front of the bus - I kid you not - four men jumped up and started digging through their pockets to make change for the man. The Metro supervisor was astonished and said, "Wow, you don't see that very often." And our regular driver, Al (also a part-time pig farmer) corrected him, "Oh yes we do."

Time and time again I have heard over the bus drivers' radios or seen in person, instances where buses go out of their way to help passengers who got confused and took the wrong bus, or were going to miss their connection to Jefferson County Transit. Many times I have said pretty much exactly what the Metro supervisor said to myself, only to see the next day or week that Al is right. I don't think it is necessarily that Al and his fellow drivers and passengers are nicer, there's just something about rural life that makes people more apt to act nicely, more friendly. On the Seattle bus, the only people who ever seem to talk are people who came over on the ferry with me, or seemingly crazy homeless people.

I'm not sure why this is the case, but I have numerous theories. A crowded environment tends to especially increase a persons sense of need for privacy and personal space and thus will tend to cause people to "mind their own business" and turn their ipods volume up. But in less crowded situations, I wonder if there is a recognition that people who appear to need any sort of assistance aren't going to have a billion other people available to help them and so one feels more compelled to do something? Not to mention that life is BUSY on the streets of downtown Seattle, there's no time to divert the bus slightly, there's no time to wait for someone to provide the correct change, there's simply no time.

Of course my perception of greater hospitality and friendliness in rural settings isn't without exceptions, but generally I think it is true. Maybe it is because rural people are more easily able to recognize their need for one another, while urbanites have an over-abundance of other people. I'm not sure. I just know that I look forward to the bus rides home with Al where we can sit and talk about hogs and goats and the weather and the local Christmas events and the fishing and the hunting and the Sportsman's Club and the need for Bainbridge Island to let the county and/or state turn 305 into four lanes. Whereas in Seattle, you can almost feel the need to shrink into the "world" stored on your ipod.