From Minneapolis: “His teeth were biting my...” [ a Top Ten Bus Stories nominee] by Jill via Bus Tales

This story appears on BusTales.com at this address: http://www.bustales.com/route/16/his-teeth-were-biting-my/ I am copying the entire story below and correcting some diacritical marks which make the current posting a bit difficult to follow.


In the early nineties I was a student at the U of MN, living off campus and without a car. As a result I became a bus expert. I specialized in the teens – the 17, the 19, the 16 – and sometimes even graduated to the 21. I have a million stories, but my favorite comes from the 16.

One spring afternoon following class I was riding the 16 from the U of MN to downtown Minneapolis. It was a busy time of day and the bus was standing room only. I stood there hanging on, shifting my weight as the bus lurched along, crowded in amongst other commuters.

A few blocks into the trip I felt pressure on my right hip. Looking down I was stunned to see a wild-eyed, bearded man biting me. Seriously. His.teeth.were.biting.my.hip. OK, no skin was broken, but he was sitting on the seat next to where I was standing with his teeth deliberately clamped down on the folds of my jeans. A perfect stranger. Biting my hip. On a crowded public bus. He was not trying to be funny. He was not trying to be sexual. He was simply biting me, like a dog with a chew toy.

“Excuse me!” I said incredulously. He immediately released. “I’m sorry,” he said. That was all.

In retrospect, a more fitting response might have been “GET YOUR F***ING TEETH OFF ME!”. . . but I’m more of an “excuse me” kind of girl. Besides, the guy looked scared, and mentally ill, and even more traumatized by the incident than I was.

After my exchange of Minnesota nice courtesies with the crazy guy, I whispered what happened to my equally non-aggressive boyfriend who was standing in front of me and then I hustled us both to a new location on the bus. The guy with the teeth ducked off the bus at the very next stop. I don’t think anyone one else even noticed my bizarre experience.

To this day it stands as one of the odder moments of my life. And to this day I am glad that all I did was say, “excuse me.”