When I go grocery shopping, which I do every couple of days, I only buy what I can carry. My right shoulder has worn out over the many years I used to sling a bag over it, so I’m pretty much limited to a couple of bags slung over the left shoulder, plus something light. I have lots of reusable shopping bags, but if I’m getting, say, a jug of cat litter, that means I’m probably not getting a case of soda at the same time.

I’m good for walking miles on the flat, and I do squats every day, but that doesn’t mean steps are easy, nor does it mean that I should be trying to walk a mile and a half home festooned with bags that are banging into my thighs. So I take the bus.

It’s usually a pleasant experience if it’s not rush hour or at school dismissal time.

Yesterday, though, I had a case of cat food cans and a bunch of jars hanging from me, and the bus wasn’t pleasant. It roared up and the driver was staring straight ahead of him, looking grim. He didn’t “kneel” the bus for me and I had to ask. He made a terrible face when I did, and stabbed at his control reluctantly (drivers usually lower it without asking). “My knees don’t exactly work,” I said, and clambered on. He said nothing.

It wasn’t crowded on the bus. An older woman was playing music on her phone, but it wasn’t loud. I took the high seat behind the driver. We went a few blocks.

The driver said, “Turn that music off!” The woman put her phone, still playing, in her shopping bag, to quiet it down. People like music, you see. It’s like company for them. They play music at the beach, too, in the breezy, sunny expanse of sand with the gulls flying overhead, as if they are creating a little living room for themselves in the wilderness. If I don’t like it, I can mute my hearing aids and play my own music (over the hearing aids, because they are Bluetooth-enabled), and I often do.

But this driver wasn’t having it. He pulled up a couple of blocks later. A woman was waiting to get on, but he didn’t open the doors. “I said turn it off,” he said.

“I put it in my bag,” said the woman, but he waited, and finally she pulled the phone out and turned it off. He let the passenger board and drove on.

At the next stop, an older man got up slowly, pushing his rollator ahead of him. “Come on!” said the driver.

“Wheelchair,” I said, though it wasn’t, exactly. The driver said nothing.

After that, every passenger getting off thanked the driver politely, as if trying to placate him. It didn’t work.

I didn’t say anything when I got off, because, “I’m sorry about your hangover,” would not have gone over well.

I was thinking about our current President and how people keep trying to figure out how to manage him, and how they have been trying to manage him for decades. His opponents creep around being extra nice and respectable, and he gleefully punishes them. His allies think they can ride his coattails if they just agree with him, and compliment him. “Thank you,” they say, and they give him prizes and awards, and he just continues being malignant and capricious, and doesn’t pardon them. But that bus driver wasn’t going to get any better just because people were being nice to him.

I’m being very unfair to the bus driver. His hangover will pass, or he’ll quit his job and go be mean to someone who can handle it better than an elderly lady with a phone, a person with bad knees and a case of cat food, or a frail man with a walker.

At any rate, the cat now has enough food for a while and my next bus driver will be nicer. They usually are. I don’t know how they manage.