I stumbled onto the bus last weekend for a cross country team day trip up to Highland Retreat, late, as usual a perpetual and not-so-fashionable characteristic of mine. With physical distancing guidelines in place, even the large charter buses used for athletic teams seemed smaller, and the only seat left was in the front row. 

As we turned onto Mount Clinton Pike, I heard a deep sigh coming from the driver’s seat. I recognized that sigh it was one of those exasperated, I-won’t-take-your-crap-today sighs, the ones reserved for days that take sheer willpower to get through. 

And then I heard it a couple more times, still within the first few minutes of the trip. 

I was starting to get annoyed. I’m trying to focus, here, I thought. I was preparing to race a 5k with my teammates, and my general race routine is to use the bus rides to breathe easy and focus before the nervous rush. The driver was interrupting my good vibes with her frustrated energy.

When we got close to camp, another teammate came up to the front to help her with directions, and she mentioned to my teammate how she was just about to start a new job with a branch of Little Debbie because this one wasn’t cutting it anymore. 

“Why’s that?” my teammate asked. 

“People just aren’t going anywhere,” the driver said. “When they don’t travel, we don’t move.” Her company anticipated that business would start to pick up again by March. “But I can’t wait that long,” she said. 

“Oh, wow, I hadn’t thought of that,” my teammate replied. My thoughts exactly.

But our driver had, of course, because it was her livelihood at stake, her bills that couldn’t be paid. And though I’m a college student who also struggles to pay monthly rent, a big hunk of privilege separates me from the gravest of realities. While my worst-case scenario might end me back up in my parents’ house, hers might be an inability to feed her children or no roof at all over her head. The systemic issues, like those affecting the working class, that are brought to blinding light by COVID-19 go even deeper and wider than I ever tried to wrap my head around. 

Yikes. And I’m pretty late to the game in trying.

After that brief conversation, I had a little more grace toward those exasperated sighs. The whole encounter reminded me of that This I Believe essay, “Be cool to the pizza dude,” that many professors rave about in their introductory college writing classes as they try to teach students how to pour out their hearts on paper. 

Basically, author Sarah Adams’ life philosophy is that “being cool to the pizza dude” is a practice in humility, empathy, honor, and equality, which she explains eloquently throughout the essay. 

But whether it be the pizza dude or the charter bus driver who took our team to the camp, simply “being cool” to them isn’t enough anymore. And it wasn’t enough before, either. 

Sure, treating people with kindness and respect might be a virtue. But so is voting for representatives who will work to offset systemic hierarchies and economic inequalities through fair wages and access to healthcare. So is acknowledging that even though this particular bus driver was white, COVID-19 still disproportionately affects BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. So is supporting local creators and business owners of color with your dollars, if you can spare a few.

So is recognizing that those deep sighs exude humanity and that there’s likely a whole chain of events, maybe even a lifetime of injustice, smouldering behind that one sigh.