Someone Else's Loma Prieta Story

To follow up on yesterday, here is a story Rye told me when I got home for the winter break.


A few days after the earthquake, Rye was on a bus going downtown. The bus wasn't crowded, but was full, and some teenagers got on the bus, making the usual noise teenagers make. Rye, who wears a hearing aid, turned it down so he could continue to ride the bus in peace. Someone else on the bus told the young people to quiet down. They refused and started arguing with the person who had asked them to be quieter.


Rye said that pretty soon everyone on the back of the bus was yelling at each other, some telling others to be quiet, others complaining that no one had the right to tell these kids what to do. Rye quickly decided that he didn't want to be around all that poisonous yelling, and got off the bus, watching it drive away with people still yelling inside.


A couple blocks later he caught up with the bus. It was pulled over to the curb, not at a stop, with an SFPD car parked behind it. The people inside were still yelling, waving their arms, and pointing at everyone else.


Rye figured that while the original argument may have been over noise, the real issue was that people were still upset by the earthquake.