One of the things that soaks up a lot of my time and keeps me from updating this blog regularly is that I’m a part time graduate student at a major southern university (SEC fans would recognize it in a heartbeat). The university is large enough that it has its own internal bus system for transportation. Parking is a nightmare (an artificially induced one; this is the south – there’s easily enough land for extra parking, but the university chooses not to provide it) and expensive (for the south – by northeastern standards its quite tame). My finances are not what they once were (a topic for another post), and parking assignments are awarded in a pseudo-lottery system that gives preference to those who have more credit hours (not me – I’m fairly new to the school and on the part time plan), so I’ve got a totally craptastic parking spot.
The bus I ride is typically packed to the gills at peak times (the 15 minutes between class periods). Today I happened to arrive a bit early, so the bus was relatively lightly full. In this case, that when I got on at the parking deck I easily got a seat, but a few stops later all the seats were full – but with plenty of standing room left.
We pull up to the next stop and about 6-7 people get on the bus (mostly girls; the campus is about 60% female). Beta Bus Boy, sitting across from me, gallantly vacates his seat and points to the hottest of the girls (a blonde, and a mere 7 at best which means she doesn’t really stick out from the crowd around here) and offers her his seat. She looks at him like he’s crazy. He proceeds down the line through two other girls who also politely decline. Then girl #4 (a 6 Asian), standing behind him, steps in and takes the seat, all the while ignoring him.
I do nothing but smirk. I’m married and have little interest in these girls. Even if I weren’t married, they’re not especially hot by campus standards (the campus is 60% female and like most 18-22 year olds, they’re mostly 6s and 7s). This move, all on its own, earns me the interest of the random girl across from me. Granted, she’s a 5 (who would easily be a 6 if she lost about 15 pounds). Still, she’s now checking me out through the corner of her eye.
A few stops later, a bunch of people get off including the random girl across from me. Girl #1, the hottest, now happily sits down in the vacated seat. Not one of the girls has given Beta Bus Boy a second look. The whole thing is a real-life and much tamer version of this video that Roissy posted a while back.
In a sane world, Beta Bus Boy would have at least gotten a thank you and a smile. But we don’t live in a sane world.
