“I have been shoved, pushed, made a cushion of and sat on by rude comrades of the everyday ride and I was up to my ears in frustration.

The average commuter is a married male, 45 years old, owns a dog and likely wishing he were rich. And he’s rude. Very.

There was this one time, eons ago, when I took the jeepney to PRC at the Taft-Buendia stop, really an imaginary 100-meter line where public utility vehicles drop off or pick up passengers with abandon, regardless of the state of foot or vehicular traffic. It’s chaos there on peak hours, mornings or early evening when people are getting to or returning from work. But this one happened off-peak when I was the first to board a 16-seater jeepney. We were nearly full when along came this couple with an animal carrier and this male, not much taller than I am, motioned, rather imperiously, for me to move on down the seat. Would have gladly given up the seat were he more courteous, but he glared as if expecting me to give in and that was when I refused to budge.

Long and short, we nearly came to blows and my Monday and the next six days after that would have been ruined.

This, and many other run-ins with discourteous and sometimes hostile commuters make the riding experience such a hassle. I can bear with someone’s halitosis blowing off someone’s mouth just a few feet from mine or bear witness to another’s armpits that have not been shaved in years and oozing with wet bacteria.

There was a time when I took a half-full jeepney from Bulacan, and just before we hit NLEX, a group of maybe 10 grown men in shorts and sleeveless shirts boarded and suddenly I was surrounded by a phalanx of fish traders on their way to the Malabon fish port. I would sit next to a banker at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel that day and I knew he knew I smelled funny, the odor of fish scales on my trousers too strong for the bottle of alcohol purchased at 7-Eleven to deodorize. That same day, on the commute back to Bulacan, I took the LRT at the Buendia Station and this guy with wet hair boarded at the next station and took the seat next to mine. One can always tell the kind of personal care people do to themselves as a matter of choice and this man-boy, probably in his late 20s, was way up there in the hygiene department. The scent of fish must have been in my trousers still but that should soon vanish as he whipped out a red laced fan from his leather bag and started spreading expensive Chanel or something. I hit the Monumento Station smelling like roses.

One has to be extra careful when taking the LRT Line 1 spanning Baclaran in Parañaque on one end all the way to Roosevelt in Quezon City at the other. I lost a postpaid iPhone 4, only a month old in my front pocket, when this was all the rage then. Someone shook the backpack slung across my right shoulder as we marched like zombies toward the Monumento turnstiles in a manner that showed impatience at the pace we were doing. You just don’t shake someone’s backpack at 8 in the evening, during rush hour, when everyone is mindful of another’s toe just inches from yours and not look in the direction of the disturbance. The man next to me and the one immediately behind him were walking as best they could like me in the hot, confined station platform and looking elsewhere so I could not tell. It was at this point that another man on my left acted like crazy, flailing his arms and unmindful that a throng of tired, hungry and irritable people look forward only to tapping his Beep card at the turnstiles and exit the station as quickly as possible and not be bothered by one making nonsensical gestures. This was when I realized that I have just been marked and the first thing I did was to check my right back pocket where my wallet and credit cards were and they were safe. But I suddenly felt numb when I felt my front right pocket and the phone was gone. I looked around and remembered seeing hundreds of faces quickly passing by, some rushing unmindful to where I was and all I could think was the 40-odd thousand pesos worth of phone that has just been lifted and I wasn’t any wiser. Later that night, at home when I turned on the Find My Phone on my laptop, I saw the thing run up the stretch of NLEX and on to Tarlac when at around 1 in the morning the green dot vanished from the screen and I was finally left with nothing.

The commuter experience is no different when taking the UV Express services because those things, ostensibly designed to transport 19 souls, including the driver, with ease, are actually movable modes of torture. I cannot count the many times I’ve boarded last on the final 12 midnight run to Bulacan and sit in between heavyweights who quickly dozed off on me not even 10 minutes into the journey, their flabs weighing tons on my weary shoulder, my small frame squeezed tight, my nuts ache with every twist and turn the cab makes as it speeds along. There was a time when this heavyset millennial woman, not quite 30, and the last to board, brought down her wide plump bottom hard on my lap like she owned the vehicle and I nearly died. This was the last straw. I have been shoved, pushed, made a cushion of and sat on by rude comrades of the everyday ride and I was up to my ears in frustration. From that point forward, I always took the front seats beside the driver and paid for two so I can ride in peace. The commute could take 45 minutes to complete on a good day or it could last twice or three times that on a bad day and I couldn’t care less because I have far more legroom now, I don’t have to worry about my nuts anymore. I don’t have to deal with someone’s sticky forearms at 9 in the morning anymore. I don’t have to ignore that metallic object from some lady’s handbag pushing up hard against my left ribcage each time the van lurches forward or brakes hard to avoid the oncoming traffic.

I thought I had it figured out and henceforth come to the office or go home to Bulacan in relative peace. Until one day I realized that the wallet with my lunch money, credit cards, ATM, social security and other credentials fell off my pocket in the cab and no one bothered to give it back. I know I lost it inside the cab because the dispatcher gave back the change to my P500 bill when I was already seated. I would spend the rest of the day not at work but at the banks and credit card issuers making sure the cards are unusable. The front desk lady at the card issuer who knows I’m a regular quipped that I looked like one with a bad day, and that lit me up a bit. Soon after, my former employers would call that my car, my going away present, was ready for pick up.

Don’t you go cheering for me. These days I deal with a different breed of road demons. I have the scratches to prove it.