Public Snoring

As many of you know I use public transportation everyday to get to work. Every morning about 6:20 I board a 57-passenger bus that heads north on I-25 to Santa Fe and then again about 4:25 back south to Albuquerque. During this 45-50 minute commute, twice a day, it is... hmmm... interesting is the word that comes to mind. Yes, very interesting. As the old song goes, "It takes all kinds to make a world" and whoever wrote that probably rode a bus.

Well, one of the benefits of having a commute where you personally don't have to drive is that you can do other things, such as read, write in your journal, listen to music or sleep. I actually do a combination of these things, and just about in that same order. Now, especially in that early morning hour, but certainly not limited to it, there tends to be a lot of sleeping on the bus. And as you can imagine 57 passengers sitting fairly close to one another, you get to see a lot of... oh yes, interesting people.

Now, public snoring tends to be something that happens quite frequently on public transportation and my question is what are the rules or protocol for dealing with such a nuisance. Sometimes I just put my headphones on and try to drown out the annoying sound.

So, last week there was this guy sitting in front of me that was snoring. The guy sitting next to him was obviously annoyed as well as he kept glancing, no glaring over at the snorer. Well, in the RARE occasion that I've been told that I snore, it's been mentioned that one way to alleviate the problem is to nudge the person and they stop. Yes, I tried it... just barely... and it worked. For a few seconds. So, I waited... and waited... then nudged harder. It worked again. This time even longer. But then he started sawing logs again. Ugh! "I'm trying to read here buddy!", I wanted to shout. So, this time I nudged even harder. Oops! Too hard! He turned around and looked at me like, "What are you doing? What do you want?" He didn't say anything and I just looked at him like, "Oh, sorry. Did I bump you?" He turned back around without saying a word and started snoring in 2 seconds. I gave up.

Last night, an older gentleman was curled up on two seats snoring away. What can you do? Well, I think that nudging is reserved only for someone you know personally, and wouldn't mind saying, "Hey, you're snoring" if they look at you.