Picnic, Hah.

I can’t figure out how to describe this trip to you. Perhaps the best would be to refer to it as a road trip from hell. More than seventy of us on a bus meant for 50. Think sardines. We left at 4am, which is fine. I have been on many road trips and am quite used to this. You get in the car, the driver drives, everyone else naps and you take your shift when it comes. In fact the last road trip I went on two of us left north Michigan at 9pm and drove until about 3pm the next day. But nothing really compares to this.
As I said we left at 4am. I got on the bus, found a seat with several other people in it, curled up and started to nod off. Now every time I got to sleep someone would prod me. “Are you tired David?” “Did you not sleep last night?” Really? Its 4am and I have been up since before that. How could they not be tired?
But they weren’t. With the bus rolling down the highway, they kicked on some tunes at full volume and all started a dance party in the isle. “Come dance, don’t sleep.” Really? Okay, so at first I must admit that I was honored to be apart of it and I laughed with them, but by 7am, I was dead. I was tired of being asked questions. I was yearning whole heartedly for that individualist space that westerns so often crave. I was fed up. I was tired.
Two things really bothered me to no end, wearing at my patience and together then at my soul. It is one thing to be cramped, another thing to be cramped the entire day in a bus with no end in sight. While it was only eight hours to where we were going, those were just stops. The bus trip did not end until about 9 that night.
However the crampedness alone is not too bothersome and at least tolerable. I enjoyed my personal space a lot before coming here. To have someone hanging on you or walking right on top of you can get old after awhile. But it can also grow on you after awhile. There is a certain bond between people that is swept aside for the sake of space in America. Everyone wishes to have good friends yet at the same time everyone is afraid to get too close for fear of losing that space. It is a “what if the walls fall down mentality.” Can you have the cake and eat it? But after ten hours, I wanted my walls, oh my sweet sweet space.
What really crept under my skin was the handful of students that would not leave me to take the air that I was suffocating to have. The youth behind me would close my window to open his more. He would close my curtain so that he could see things better. My only escape to the outside was constantly and consistently being sealed off. I was pissed off to no end, even to the point of me slamming his grasping window closing hand against the wall. It was clearly wearing at my soul and he was not the only one. Even when I tried to move elsewhere on the bus, I was followed. They would grab my arms, try to rub my head, and do many things that they discovered I did not like.

It makes me wonder. Did Jesus ever get pissed off? Sure Jesus was the Son of God, a.k.a. God, but he was also human. I am sure with twelve of them living in close quarters always together there must be things about the disciples that ticked Him off to no end. Maybe Peter clicked a lot when he talked and John always was puppy dogging him. You think He ever turned around and said SHUT UP? I am not so sure either but as much as I question the heavenly side of Christ, I might as well question the earthly side.

By the time the bus stopped for the night I was ready to get off. It ended up that we had to walk a ways in the dark to get to the place that we were staying. Could a better situation for me occur? I walked about 20 meters behind everyone else, mostly in the shadows as quite as I could be. I enjoyed the night and the stars and the peace that comes with it. Nothing was better for my soul. Upon a good night’s rest with plenty of room, (I intentionally chose to sleep on the floor.) I was ready for day two trapped in the bus.
I tried to approach this day different. I was going to actively engage anyone who harassed me. I was going to talk to the kid behind me as much as he wanted and then some. I was going to joke and sit on people and mess with everyone more than they had messed with me the day before. I was going to try to approach everyone with a positive light. I was going to try to embrace the sardine-ness rather than repel it. Really, the day ended up going a whole lot better. That isn’t to say that I was not ready to get off the bus at the trip, but it was better. So maybe not quite the road trip from hell.