Slugging

This past week, I attended the Texas Library Association Convention, held here in Houston at the George R. Brown Convention Center. The Center resides downtown, just a block or two across from Minute Maid Park. I live in Houston's suburbs, so driving into downtown isn't an option I even entertain. Instead, I drive to the nearest Park and Barf, where I leave my truck and climb aboard one of those two car buses hooked together with that rubber accordion thingie.

It's a pleasant enough experience and a hell of lot faster and less stressful than trying to drive myself.

Waiting at the curb for my afternoon bus back home, I queued up in a line for the 214. I hadn't waited long before a white car pulled up to the curb and lowered its passenger window. The driver inside leaned over and yelled out, "217?" A man in the middle of the line next to me stepped out, strode deliberately up to the car, and climbed in. The car sped off. I shrugged my shoulders, completely mystified.

The next afternoon, I waited by the same curb, but earlier in the day so I alone formed the queue. I wasn't standing there even a minute before a white Lexus pulled up to the curb next to me, its passenger window lowering synchronously as the car came to an abrupt stop. Eerily similar to yesterday, the woman inside leaned over to get my attention and yelled, "214?"

I responded with a double-take. I thought, how the hell does she know what bus I need? And why does she care? I thought that, but I said, "Huh?" She repeated, "214? Hop in." I opened the door and slid in. She sped off when I closed the door and I stammered a question, something about does she often pick bus riders off the curb. She affirmed that she did, every morning and afternoon. I'm about to ask her the critical question of "why," when I see her steering her Lexus toward the HOV lane and then it suddenly dawned on me: she's picks up an extra passenger so she can legally use the city's High-occupancy Vehicle lane. I exhaled a mental breath of relief that I wasn't going to be driven to a slum and murdered in a desolate alleyway.

The kind driver (I don't think we ever exchanged names) indeed drove me to my Park and Barf, chit-chatting the entire time about her job (accounting) and about mine (teaching). The whole thing seemed surreal to me until she dropped me off at the station and I walked to my truck.

When I summarized the whole thing for Wifezilla, she cheerfully interrupted me with, "You were a slug!" Turns out drivers around the country jump at the chance to pick up hitchhikers; apparently, few of them have seen this movie lately. I have, and still stepped into the car of a complete stranger.

Turns out I was a slug and never knew it.