Busdriver scares the crap out of punkass kids.

It's a relatively warm Saturday afternoon and after a long, lazy day of lounging on my couch I'm headed downtown to pick a girlfriend's birthday gift. I take the 38L Geary with my roommate because for some reason it's a more pleasant bus ride than the 5 Fulton or the 21 Hayes which run closer to my locale, maybe just because there's more of them so they're more frequent. We pass Jones St. and she gets off. Across the aisle from me, a large and very much in charge off-duty bus driver in her uniform, short hair, and glasses strung up on a cord, gets up and walks toward the back of the bus, where some 12-year-olds (although I'm usually wrong about kids' ages) are being cool and tagging the windows with red permanent markers.

She tells them they're being irresponsible and that they're not thinking about others. She says, "It's everyone's bus. Not just yours. Not everyone is going to like that, you know. You're doing some very disrespectful." She says it the way a librarian says it in middle school, when you return a book and it's obvious that you spilled juice all over it. I've seen adults tell kids to stop fucking around before, and it's not very effective. The kid who was still holding the marker said he's sorry, ma'am, and he'll never do it again, ma'am.

She says, "Bull. I don't believe you. You're lying to me." The kid tries to convince her, although she isn't threatening him with a fine or to turn him in to the cops, or anything like that. She keeps saying, "You're lying to me right now."

By the time I had to get off the bus, the kid was in tears. His mates looked horrified. The entire time she didn't raise her voice or back down. I wish I didn't have to get off then, I would have loved to shake her hand.