Bus Station from Hell

The weekend of my dreams was only inches away, I could feel it, as me and my best friend sat at the Roanoke bus station waiting for our bus. We had rushed to get there, and due to much traffic from the Virginia Tech football game, it was amazing we made it there on time. However, once we arrived we realized that the fact that we were on time didn’t seem to matter, as the bus was not.

Almost an hour of waiting had gone by and I had already seen some of the funniest and strangest things of my life. While in the bus station there was an indoor place where we were sitting. Here there were rest rooms, vending, and a check in desk. There were a few other characters, however, that made this wait one of the most interesting I’ve ever had, which says something, considering that I have seen quite some interesting things while waiting in line for an amazing roller coaster at a theme park, many a time.

There were three so called “normal” people across from us, a girl and guy who were friendly and holding a conversation with each other and next to them a girl who didn’t talk, but once, when she was on the phone. On the bench perpendicular to us there were two gentlemen, one who sat in the same position, with the same look on his face for who knows how long, and the other who was on the search of a phone charger that would fit his phone. He gave up quickly once he asked all of the people in the station and none of them had one that fit.

There were a few wanderers outside, and on the way to the bathroom I noticed a guy sleeping on the ground. Even the worker behind the desk wasn’t what I would call “normal.” He had something painted on the side of his face that looked like a crescent moon around his eye which led down the side of his cheek. Then there was the man I found to be the most interesting, he claimed he was a veteran and he walked around with a cane, he was in and out of the building constantly, and I wasn’t quite sure if he was homeless or actually waiting on a bus. He had a few bags with him. He would stay out and smoke a cigarette or two and then come inside and start yelling at the people on the inside, that the guy lying on the ground needed to be woken up.
We all figured that the man on the ground had some relation to the veteran, but then he went over and woke the man up and told him to get up, he helped the guy into a seat and then covered him with his blanket. He asked him when his bus was, and so just about every five minutes the veteran would come back and wake up the sleeping man. At one point he yelled at the guy to get up and go outside to “stretch his legs” and “have a smoke.” He seemed to have a sweet heart but at the same time he would walk by me and give me evil glares, and he would tell the man that none of the people in the bus stop wanted to wake him up.

It was quite the night, and it hadn’t even begun, over an hour past our departure time, the next bus for a different destination had already come, picked up the sleeping man, who ended up not missing his bus, and a few others. Now there were a whole new set of characters, including Mr. Veteran, like I said I don’t know if he was waiting on a bus or if he was just the man assigned a duty of waking up the people who fall asleep. This whole new bunch, brought a whole new set of stories.

There was one family of three, a father and his two kids, one boy that was probably around the age of 4 or 5 and a girl who was around the age of 2 or 3. The little girl was very shy; when Jessie and I smiled at her she hid her face in the space between her father’s knees. The boy seemed very tired, as well as the girl, seeing as it was only 4:30 in the morning by now. You could see this by the massive bags under their eyes and the fussy tones. Jessie decided to go across the street and get us some McDonald’s breakfast. As we sat their eating our hash browns, the little girl started to warm up to us, she sat in between us and we gave her some of our hash browns and she really became really pleased with us then.

Slowly, I noticed that the father was bringing in their bags, off of the bus they had just come off of. I began to realize that the bags the man was bringing in were very unusual, they were not the typical duffle bags you take on a trip, but rather two very large body bags, a very big laundry bag, a few little bags that had toys in them, and another bag which was filled with snacks. This didn’t seem like the family was simply going for a visit anywhere. This made me wonder if maybe the family was moving somewhere. Had their mother kicked them out? Had their house been foreclosed on? And if that then where was their mother? It made me sad to see this and think about the future of these kids, and how this might affect them. Their father seemed like a very caring and loving dad.

After looking at all these new faces, and listening to some of the people talk it made me wonder where these people were going in life, and how had they gotten to where they are now. Who knew that sitting in a bus stop at the crack of dawn could get one thinking so profoundly?