Hitching A Ride

"Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose ... and if you ever saw it you would even say it glows."\nThis is where I come in.\n"Like a light bulb?"\n"Yaaaaay! All of the other reindeer . . ."\nAnd here I was afraid nothing interesting was going to happen tonight. Instead, within five minutes of boarding the Bloomington Transit Midnight Special a.k.a. the "drunk bus," I found myself an oasis of sanity between a sagely bus driver with a dream and three drunken sorority girls regaling the two of us with Christmas carols.\nAnd it was only 12:15.\nI'd set out to witness the Bloomington nightlife through the eyes of a sober man, but by the third chorus of "Frosty the Snowman," I really needed a beer.\n"Do you want some chips?" one of the girls asks me.\nNo, I want a beer. "No thanks. I just brushed my teeth."\nSo she tries to pass them off to Paul, the bus driver, instead. Apparently, the chips were stolen from Jimmy John's, which is somehow a selling point. But Paul can't have salt, so most of the chips end up on the floor instead. What's left of them find their way to the tip jar. Paul is now accessory to chip theft.\nThe girls get off at Kilroy's Sports, and Paul and I get to talking.\nPaul Carter is a 37-year-old father of four who coaches the junior varsity offensive line at Bloomington North High School and moonlights as a bus driver for drunken college kids. He was raised by his mother in Indianapolis before attending Ball State to play football and major in telecommunications. He dreamed of becoming a sportscaster but had kids instead.\nNow, in a world where thousands of kids trying to be adults test their freedom from their parents, Paul's trek between Kirkwood and North Jordan gives him the chance for some surrogate counseling.\n"You can always talk to a stranger," he says. "You can always talk to the guy on the bus, because he doesn't know your father."\nPaul has a lot of stories about the trials and tribulations of living the life IU. I ask him if he has any favorites, and all of the sudden I'm in the middle of HBO's "Taxicab Confessions."\nHe says the story that touched him the most was the one about the education major who was a few weeks from graduation. She was terrified because she wasn't ready to be a teacher. She didn't think she could handle a classroom by herself. Mostly, she wasn't ready for the real world.\n"The biggest issue in college is finding your passion," he continues. "Some don't find it. Because they live their whole life through the eyes of someone else, but they never look through their own eyes."\nAs he psychoanalyzes today's college student, Paul talks older than he looks in his blue hooded sweatshirt and baggie sweats. Much of his wisdom centers around this theme of "finding your own path" through life.\n"Most of us that are parents like to think we have the ability to control the destiny of our kids," he says over a Polar Pop during our 1 a.m. Mac's break, "but in reality, the best we can do is to steer."\nPaul thinks he might be in a position to do some occasional steering. Because he is so far-removed from the typical college student's social network and because the majority of his patrons are a couple 15-cent-drafts south of sober, drunk bus riders usually aren't afraid to open up to him. And while Bloomington Transit's padded vinyl seats aren't quite as cozy as a therapist's couch, Paul and the Health Center shrinks probably hear a lot of the same stuff.\n"You'll see their insecurities, you'll see their sadness," he says, "and for some, you'll see their happiness."\nOr sometimes they're not sure if they're happy or sad, like another of Paul's favorite stories.\n"Like this young man that's got a baby on the way, and he wants to marry this young lady," he recalls. "He just needs confirmation. He thought he knew what he wanted to do, but now he's going to Iraq. Talk about confusion."\nWe talk about confusion and college angst for a few more stops as the Midnight Special dodges parked cars and the pedestrians darting between them on Dunn Street. Paul greets each passenger with a hearty, "Where ya going?" and then takes them there with little regard for any specific route.\nA couple more bar-hoppers climb aboard and start arguing something about whether Ron Artest could kick Ben Wallace's ass in a street fight. As passengers come and go, the conversation moves from sports, to politics to religion. These are familiar topics to Paul, who likes to get to know his passengers beyond their party-goer facades.\n"Everybody wants to be seen, everybody's got to have a reputation," he says. "It's no different from high school. A lot of it is for show."\n"I'm so drunk I don't even know what's going on," says the girl in the stiletto heals and bare-back top to the girl in the stiletto heels and low-cut cleavage.\nEvidently, reputation maintenance takes so much of our attention, a lot of us four-or-five year Hoosiers completely miss out on some facets of Bloomington life.\n"Kids, let's face it, they're pretty numb," Paul says. "They probably don't notice the poor people walking around, either. People don't notice each other. There's a lot of anti-social people around. You think about the people who just shove past each other and never realize that that person has a beautiful smile."\nApparently, a lot has changed since when Paul was growing up.\n"People got scared. They became introverted."\nHe's probably right. Despite our sheltered environment, there's a lot to be scared of in college. We can be scared of the responsibility for our own future, our own apartment or our own reputation. So, if for one night, a trip to the bars can make us responsible for nothing at all, it's comforting to know Paul will get us home safely.