when i was 16 i went to an online charter school there are quotes around online because it had an actual building you had to go to in a sketchy strip mall somehow this place was actually accredited by the state i started going there because i was 16 and i thought i knew better than my dad at the time who wanted me to stay in public school in order to get home i would have to get on a bus and the buses in my city are really cheap and there are a lot of strange people who
get on them naturally i had several instances with people on the public transit but one sticks out to my mind one day i was sitting on the bus stop bench when a grown man approached me while also waiting for the bus he was tall older and wore dirty clothes his teeth were all yellowed which is the second most distinct thing that sticks out to me now besides his mustache more than likely he was homeless the first thing he said to me after sitting just a little too close was hi what's your name man was weird
a little awkward but nothing too bad despite this it was setting off creep alarms in the back of my head so i gave him a nervous smile and a fake name there was no way i was going to give this guy my real name now i have always looked much younger than i actually am even now at 18 i still get comments from people who believe i'm a freshman in high school this is due in part to having a round face and still dealing with acne this is what makes what happened next extra weird he
got closer and told me you know you're very pretty i wasn't used to compliments the time to a certain extent i'm still not however i knew i didn't want them from this guy i just continued smiling nervously and scooted away from him on the bus stop benj i remember his breath being pretty rancid and him trying to scoot closer to me still he got a boyfriend what's the next thing he asked now i'm gay but i did answer yes just to his question at the time i was actually trying to force myself to date a
close friend who was a man and liked me so it wasn't a total lie even if it wasn't though i still would have said yes but this did not deter him he tried to touch my hair more than once rested his hand on my knee and tried to move it to my thigh and other weird stuff the next thing that he pressed me for was my number i didn't actually believe this guy had a phone but in case he managed to find a pay phone in the year 2017 i decided to give him a fake
number just in case i was a dreading getting on the bus where i would have to ride all the way home to an empty apartment for hours with a window that had a broken lock even if he didn't plan on doing anything that day what if he did another time i didn't want this man knowing where i lived when the boss finally got there after what felt like forever i was terrified but i'm surprised to find that he got on the same one i made a beeline for a seat next to an old woman where
he couldn't sit next to me he sat in a close by seat and kept glancing at me for what felt like forever until i had an idea the next stop was right by a convenience store where a friend of my name did james word i didn't know if he would be working at the time but it was honestly my only hope and if that didn't work i could at least go inside and call the cops and my mom when the bus stopped i got off of it and ran to the store as fast as i
could sure enough james was working i checked to see if the guy had followed me to discover that he had and was walking towards the store i quickly explained to james the fact that i had been followed by a creepy older man and i didn't know what to do now he wasn't a bodybuilder or anything but james was a big guy not the kind of guy you want to mess with and he told me that he would take care of it when the creep entered james approached him and asked him if he needed anything the
old guy glanced at me and said he didn't need anything but was gonna wait outside if that was okay james told him no it wasn't and that if he did he'd be calling the police the creep did not appear to like the sounds of that seeing his head he had no chance of ever beating james in a physical confrontation he left in a hurry after i was sure that he was gone i completely broke down and cried for a good long time in that store james may have saved my life that day or at least
save me from something horrific i ended up calling my mom to come get me she was upset about having to leave work but when i told her the whole thing that was basically the end of my online school and my bus days finished my semester and got rides from my grandfather and went back to public school the semester after that my a european woman am currently staying in a south american capital and being a foreigner i guess i stand out a little bit i didn't feel threatened or in danger at all during the month that
i spent there until yesterday i was waiting for the bus alone at around 3 pm on a sunny day no one else was around and then some guy appeared in the distance i can't really say why but he looked too shady probably because he looked like he was walking straight towards me even if the payment was pretty wide i pretended that i didn't see him and waited for him to pass by but he came to me asking for money and maybe something else that i didn't understand i answered very firmly that no i didn't have
anything to give him and step back a little keeping my head up and trying to show that i was not disturbed he kept coming closer to me making me feel very uncomfortable and started pointing his finger in my face saying i'll kill you i'll kill you repeatedly that's when i started thinking that i might be in danger even if this guy didn't have any visible weapon i had no idea what he was capable of especially as he was extremely close to me and he was still threatening to kill me here still trying to calmly walk
away from him so as to not show him i was panicking i looked all around for someone who might help me but the street was still deserted and that's when i saw a bus coming i waved at it and the door was already open i climbed in without looking back the driver's assistant told me to hurry to get in he had seen the scene from a distance and he told me not to worry that we just needed to get away from the crazy guy this all happened in the span of 30 seconds but a lot
could have gone wrong in such a short amount of time i'm glad i remained relatively calm and i'll probably invest in pepper spray for the future to paint a picture i'm a guy who loves having long hair and when this happened i was not yet able to grow facial hair as well as i do now so i was clean shaven and pretty much looked like i could be a girl due to some rather feminine features maya just come out of university and gotten on the bus there was only one place free where nobody else was
sitting so i got to nearly the back of the bus and sat next to the window just listening to music minding my own business behind me in the back of the bus were two other guys who looked like they might have been either homeless or did a job that made them have rather dirty clothing i hadn't seen them when i came in because i tend not to look at people all that much that's social anxiety and just wanting to get home early they seem to be a bit drunk and that's kind of how the next
bit came to be about nine minutes into the bus ride i felt a tap of my shoulders snapping me out of my staring out the window routine and it was the guy sitting at most towards the middle i shall shorten him to dg for either dirty guy or drunk guy hey there can you break a tenor oh sorry i don't have any whoa that's not a voice i expected are you a guy or a girl i was rather annoyed now i'm a guy and sorry i can't help you at this point i put my headphones
back on and went back to looking out the window because this is where any normal albeit rude conversation would have ended healing back to his seat and had a conversation with his friend which was becoming increasingly loud before i felt another tap on my shoulder i sigh and take off my headphones again [Music] yeah so uh do you have a wiener what me and my friend just made a bet on whether you do or not and you take off your parents what the heck is wrong with you at this point the dg had gotten up
while his friend was encouraging him and blocked my way out of my seat come on let us see i'll share the money with you all right dude leave me alone i became aware of the fact that he was a lot taller and stronger than me and to the fact that everyone else on the bus was trying to ignore my situation he moved closer and put his hand on my chest and rather forcefully said show me now this reflexively caused me to shove him as hard as i could this dude was apparently drunken states made him
fall backwards as i quickly pushed past him the bus had just stopped so i got out while he was struggling to get to his feet the bus pulled away and i saw him and his friend shouting and making gestures i stood there shaking at the bus stop waiting for the next bus for about 10 minutes when i was a 17 year old senior in high school i was in my school music department auditioned woman's choir one day i rushed home to have dinner with my mom before going back to the school for context i got
home around to 3 30 to 3 45 and had to be back to school by sex so i would usually take the bus that got me to school around to 5 30 so that i would have time to go to the bathroom and grab some water and relax for a few minutes before i walked into a rehearsal with several girls who were popular snooty and loved to mock me every chance they got which is also beside the point except to say that it put me in a less than perfectly at ease kind of mental state
for the night there was a bus stop but diagonally across the intersection from the small three-story apartment building that i would usually wait at to catch a bus to the station or i would pick up the bus to the school i had only been standing there for about a minute when this guya looked to be about 45-55 call them dave just to have something to call him even though i don't know his actual name i get a bit of a creepy vibe from him from the start but i tried to be polite being a naive
17 year old i was and hoping that i was just being paranoid dave takes another step or two closer to me and starts asking me personal questions like what my name was my age and what school i went to you know things that someone who's closer to retirement than they are at high school should not be asking or saying to a minor even one who's 17 he continued to try to talk to me until the bus arrived while i gave him shorter and shorter responses to his questions and tried to make it clear that i
wasn't interested in continuing the conversation any further i got on the bus and to my disappointment but certainly not a surprise he followed suit sitting in the front-facing seat directly behind me the entire way to the bus station he kept whispering my ear about how sexy i was what great eyes i had etc i tried to ignore him and put my earbuds in my ears but he pulled my earbud out of my left ear the one closer to the window end most likely out of the driver's view in the mirror he looked closer and got
his mouth so close to me here that i could feel his breath as he spoke you would look beautiful on my bed yeah that would be a good look for you this is the only thing he said where i can remember an exact quote even now a decade later i can still sometimes feel this breath on my ear i just hope that one day i'll stop feeling that same sketched out skin is crawling feeling whenever i see anyone who looks even remotely like him when i was in middle school i took these city bus to
school because my parents couldn't drive me and no school buses rounded to my neighborhood i didn't live in a very good place but i never felt unsafe probably because i was a kid and i thought myself invincible that morning i got on the bus to go to school sixth grade at the time so i was about 12. but let me tell you i've always looked much younger than my age it was decently crowded so i go to my usual spot in the back a few stops go by and then a man gets on and sits
right next to me it's been about 10 years now but i still remember how it looked tall thin with long straight black hair there was maybe one or two seats open so it wasn't weird that he was next to me at first i just figured he sat in the first seat that he saw open but then he started to talk to me i can't remember what he said at first but being early in the morning and already peeved that i had to share my space with him i just made a vague disinterested noises at him
and then he asked where i was going and that's when my spidey senses started to tingle because obviously it was early morning and i'm a child so i'm going to school so i said school intake del way and i realize now he was probably looking for me to tell him which school a few stops went by on the bus opened up more so i quickly went and found another empty seat not five minutes later he follows and sits right next to me again and still tries to get me to talk to him he asked my
name i look to the front of the bus and see some 8th graders that i know from school and from riding the spies my animal brain screams at me to find safety in the pack i move up to the front of the bus and plant myself in the middle of them and basically press myself into them and give them help me eyes the guy moves again and sits directly in front of me he asks my name again and one of the boys i'm sitting with g quickly calls me by a fake name and turns his
body so he's kind of shooting me and carries on a conversation with me until we get to our school the group of eighth graders basically formed a circle around me and we huddled off the bus and i turned to make sure the creep it didn't follow us thankfully he didn't follow but for the next few weeks i caught either the earlier or later bus in case he was on it again and since the bus stop was right in front of my school i was afraid he knew where i went in would show up but i
never saw him again thankfully i was on my way back home from a late night session at the gym the gym is right next to my campus but my flat was on the complete other side of the city so i was definitely making sure that i caught one of the last buses otherwise it was a long long walk back i got to the bus stop and it was empty except for one older guy who looked pretty disheveled and out of it already this was setting off alarm bells in my mind so i stood far away
from him and began to wait the bus tracker said that the next bus wouldn't be for another 15 minutes dang it oh well i put my headphones in and started listening to one of my podcasts to pass the time all the while making sure i kept the man within my peripheral vision it should be noted at this point that i have dwarfism i'm four foot nothing in about 80 pounds and i'm used to unwanted attention it was against my better judgment that i was even out this late by myself and an unfamiliar part of town
i must have left my guard slip because i suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder and the man was standing right next to me too close i looked up at him and he was saying something to me so i took my headphones out to hear him you you're right there pal i was saying that i've never seen one of you before he was swaying and grinning at me i'm all right thanks what bus are you getting i didn't want to answer that truthfully but there were only two buses left to come that night i said
it was the other one and he lied to disappointed i always wanted to meet one of you he stood there and stared at me for what felt like a whole minute i felt his eyes all over me now i think i understand what people mean when they say they felt like a piece of meat eventually he said do you do it i've had some inappropriate questions from strangers before but that took the biscuit i should have said that it wasn't none of his business but i found myself saying yes uncomfortably he seemed to contemplate that
for a while amused by the idea what's it like down there i've always wanted to know from his town he sounded excited i took a couple steps away from him this time i was more prepared it's not really your business i was thinking about how long the walk would be back home he was getting the bus that i needed i didn't know where the other bus went was it worth going through with a lie i didn't know i suspected that he would get on these same bus as me regardless he took a step closer this
was the moment i actually got scared he saw me step backwards and didn't care he knew i was uncomfortable and he didn't care that means it's big he laughed i bet it does i've always wanted to and that was it i wish i had said a screw off or leave me alone or something but i was too scared i need to go i blurted and walked as briskly as i could without running it would take him no effort at all to catch up to me here i pictured him walking behind me with his much longer
legs but i didn't want to log i walked for a couple minutes before i finally glanced back he was still at the bus stop but he had moved about 10 feet to stand at the edge of it i could only see his silhouette against the light at the bus stop but i could tell that he was watching me i turned around a corner street just to get out of sight i walk the full hour and a half home picturing him following me the whole way creeps me out to this day you