The bus ride

The other day after work I was waiting for my bus, the 26. It was late which isn't that unsual and when it did arrive I hopped on. As usual, we wove around downtown Seattle before heading to Fremont. About halfway to Fremont I began to read a book that I bring with me to pass the time. The Fremont stop is usually the largest and this day was no different -- about half of the passengers exited the bus in the self-proclaimned center of the universe. My own stop in Wallingford is about 10 minutes after Fremont, so I went back to reading my book. After a few minutes I glanced up to see if we were getting close to my stop and much to my surprise I did not recognize my surroundings. I'm new to this particular bus route and so I'm not too alarmed at this point. It's perfectly feasible that I'm not very familiar with the surroundings on my new route, especially at night, right? Wrong. I definetly was in an area of Seattle that I did not recognize. I was now faced with the unpleasant task of walking to the front of the bus to confess my ineptitude to the bus driver. In the silent bus I made my way forward after everyone who was stopping had cleared out. Amidst the silence on the bus was the tangible anticpation of the expetant passengers waiting for the driver to resume their journey. I cut through the silence with my bold and ignorant question, "This isn't the 26, is it?" The driver had a somewhat perplexed and amused expression on his face when he told me that no, I was on the 28. He told me to exit here and then wait for the 28 headed back to Fremont on the other side of the street. Like a big boy, I looked both ways before crossing but I was a little scared since I didn't have anyone's hand to hold. How could this happen? Most distressing was that I didn't even recognize where I was. Deep down though I think I know the reason that I was in such an unfortunate position. I was distracted reading my book, The Idiot.