This Bus Is Mine!

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to my bus! Have a seat. I know it’s early, and I know that most of the U. S. is still asleep, bleary visions of tonight’s drunken free-for-all (also known as New Year’s Eve) in their heads, but you and I, the waiters and secretaries and cab drivers of industry, we’re up and at ‘em!

And look! You have your pick of seats! Even your bag can have its own seat (in direct violation of the suggested rules I’ve sent to the transit authority)!

Look at us go!

Makes you proud, doesn’t it, how much we do, how hard we work? Proud, with just a touch of nausea.

That’s the beautiful thing about the week between Christmas and the New Year. Empty buses! Empty highways! Plenty of room at the lunch counters! Plenty of room for contemplation! Why, you’d have to be nuts to take this week off!

The malls, of course, are up to their elbows in people, but what are we? American teenagers? No! We don’t have time to shop! Dagnab it, people, we’ve got an economy to propel here!

So welcome to the bus. And thank you for everything you’ve done this year. You, the common man and/or woman (I’m not here to judge), the people who have gone to work no matter how many times they’ve slipped on the ice on the way there, no matter that someone – someone! – threw up on you on your way out the door in the morning (inconsiderate infants!), no matter how many times you said, “I’m sick of working! Would you win the lottery already?!”, you – yes, you! – are the reason it all continues to come together the way it does.

And for that, you should be thanked.

So thank you. And see you on the bus next year. You can sit next to me.