From Edinburgh, Scotland: "The last Etruscan" [a Top Ten Bus Stories nominee]. (Not Reading On the Bus)

For many weeks, before Christmas, there was a young woman who got on the bus a few stops along from me who, despite her softly rounded features, neat plaits and pink hair clips, always seemed regally self-possessed.  Perhaps it was something in the straight-shouldered way she carried herself, or her complete lack of interest in the other passengers.

Her interest was always outside the bus, at least for the first few yards, when she would be looking intently out the window for the skinny young man with the sparse moustache who would be waiting at the B&B just along the road from the bus stop.  On dry days he would be on the steps; if the weather was very wet, he would be standing inside, looking out the bay window with its small sign hanging from a chain that always said: ‘vacancies’.

(Read more here.)

From Madison County, Alabama: "“The Older Woman," by Tom Brandon

When she stepped onto the bus for the first time it was like a new Ferrari driving onto a used car lot, all eyes were immediately focused on her. A high school girl, on a bus with elementary school boys. (Read more here.)

From NYC: "We Found Our Son in the Subway," by Peter Mercurio (The New York Times)

The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station. (Read more here.)

From Silverwood, Michigan: "An open letter to the weird guy on my bus in 1986" [a Top Ten Bus Stories nominee], by Pony

Dear socially inept, odd smelling, greasy haired, slouching guy with a lazy eye, odd speech syntax and perpetually grease smeared glasses who was a senior when I was a sophomore and who arbitrarily got assigned to sit by me on the bus in 1986,

(Read more here.)

From Portland, Oregon: "So this is what crazy looks like" [a Top Ten Bus Stories nominee], by Bill Reagan (posted on Trimet Diaries)

As the train lurched and halted at the various tops, the woman addressed various people individually with a big smile and warm greeting, no apparent goal except to be friendly in tight quarters. These are the type of people a few of my friends imagine when they justify not riding public transit: rubbing elbows with “the great unwashed” (one friend’s quotation,) sudden conversations with people who put the strange in “stranger,” trapped in a box with someone eager to volunteer their opinions without prompting.

(Read the whole story here.)