I don’t have a car. I don’t like ordering online more than I have to, and I don’t like returning things. I also find people entertaining. That means when I want to buy something that requires trying on, I take the bus.

The voyage takes a very long time, what with taking one bus to another bus stop, waiting at the bus stop for up to half an hour, and winding out the highway and down a long arterial road into the immense parking lots surrounding King of Prussia Plaza and the Court.

The people-watching often makes up for it. My bus yesterday was quiet, and people were sunk in their thoughts, but a White woman with red hair in a top knot was sitting opposite me with her young baby, talking to a Black woman with interlaced, manicured fingers who was charmed by the baby. They didn’t know each other, they were just having one of those baby conversations that older women sometimes strike up, and the red-haired mother was charming and sweet.

I also like to look at people’s clothing choices; one of my fellow passengers was a symphony in pink, with shiny straight pink hair, a pink cardigan, and a pink purse. She had her arms tightly folded, and was staring in front of her the whole way, so she may not have found her pinkness as diverting as I did.

The downside of being jammed into a bus with other people was the woman staring out the window and humming tunelessly, just loudly enough to remind me of my mother, who did that when she was annoyed. When my mother was really annoyed, she would start to whistle tunelessly. At least the woman didn’t whistle.

It is always strange to be carried along through my past. The Schuylkill Expressway opened in 1960, when I was 9 years old, and my father used to drive it every day. It’s a bit of a disaster; it wasn’t big enough to handle the amount of traffic it was carrying from the moment it was opened, and it’s between hills and buildings on one side and the river on the other, so they can’t widen it much or construct other highways; the congestion just keeps getting worse. People used to call it the “Surekill Distressway.” 

As the bus became local again, it filled up. Three people were crowded into the entry of the bus now, though there were empty seats further back. People like to position themselves where they can get out easily, and they don’t like sitting down next to other people. Not wanting to sit next to other people explains a lot of car culture in the US. And it explains a fair amount of bus culture, too, and while I’m at it, bathroom culture. Rear ends are delicate, you see, and one can’t be mingling them in proximity of other people’s butts.

Once we got off the highway, we got on Gulph Road, which cruises past little 1960s cottages and low two story apartment buildings that have also not changed since I was a child, though they were cheaply made and look thin and boxy.

I went to LL Bean and got the sweater I had come to buy, and another tote bag, and then sat in a pay-as-you-go massage chair for half an hour, thinking that I might not come out here again, because most of the stuff in the store had been a cheaply made mimicry of the sturdy, utilitarian things they used to sell.

Since I was already at the mall, I walked to the shoe store at the other end, admiring the luxury stores on the way, wondering who would buy any of that stuff. One universal characteristic of everything I saw, whether it was in Hot Topic to Balenciaga, was that it too was badly made, distinguished chiefly by logos. It was all a simulation of a fantasy that wasn’t necessarily any more authentic fifty years ago, but at least fifty years ago it was a little better made, generally out of natural fibers.

I didn’t buy any shoes after all, because the shoes I tried on weren’t very well constructed either, and I didn’t buy food, because I wasn’t hungry, so I caught the bus back. At least the Schuylkill Expressway was true to form; we were in stop-and-go traffic most of the way back.

The girl with the pink hair was on my bus again.

I caught a different bus to my house; it was still rush hour, so we were all jammed together. I wedged myself between a stout lady and a grumpy man with an enormous shopping cart, and chatted with the stout lady; across from me there was a mutterer (a toothless man with a folded wheelchair who kept erupting into incomprehensible gruff shouts). People getting on and off had to thread their way between the shopping cart, the wheelchair, and the clot of people in the entryway who didn’t want to risk their delicate butts by sitting down.

“Would you please move back and take a seat?” the bus driver, a woman, finally yelled. “There’s plenty of room back there,” and reluctantly, slowly, most of the entry-standers shoved themselves back. They didn’t sit down, though.

At least my sweater fits well.