Passenger One

My first ever passenger on The Bus of Doom was a man I had been crushing on since I was a teen. We had not seen each other for years and when I came back from living overseas all newly seperated from my husband and worldly wise, fashionable and fit we immediately clicked.

He had been seeing someone for many years but they had seperated some months before, they had an interesting relationship to say the least as she had moved out of his house to live over the road. He explained that they maintained a friendship because he was still close with her children and she would have dinner at his house once a week. He often complained that she was still jealous, even though she did not want him. She would do odd things like turn up at his bedroom window at 5am, or peer into his visitors' cars to get an idea of who they might be. Hmmm...

They had dinner on Thursday night of every week. Every week he would ring me up Friday morning and tell me it was all over and he shouldn't see me any more. I would drive off to my sister's house for the weekend. He would follow me there and make up with me Saturday. It would happen again the next week. Why did I keep letting him make up with me? Did I mention that I was an idiot? No? Well...I was an IDIOT.

Now any normal, non-idiot might have picked up on certain obvious clues that there was a problem here. The constant break up/ get together pattern, his occasionally referring to our relationship as an affair despite insisting he was single, my not being allowed to call his house on Thursdays in case she was there and got upset...yes, you guessed it ...they were still engaged.

How did I find out? (Being a complete numb nut and in serious don't pay attention to the obvious mode) it was an early morning wake-up call that gave me the biggest clue. You do not want to hear this at 5am - unless you have a really important meeting you need to get to and alarm clocks just don't get your juices pumping well enough-  "You slut, you have been utterly disrespectful to me. If you ever go near him again I will DO YOU HARM!" hang up. As you can imagine this was then followed by a discussion with Passenger One with some polite queries about his relationship status where the words "She threw my engagement ring back at me" were mentioned and I calmly suggested he not spend time with me any more.

Let's not go into the bizarre decision to move out of your fiancees house and live across the road, nor the impulse that led him to sleep with me when he was still engaged, and instead focus on what happened after that fascinating day when I woke up to find out I was sleeping with Mr Unfaithful Jerkwad, the man engaged to Ms Crazypants and he became Passenger One on The Bus of Doom because it is always the events afterwards that entertain me.

1. She told him to cut off ALL contact with me which he obligingly did (as if I wanted to talk to him!)

2. She waited a decent period of time (a week) and then dumped his arse (completely this time)

3. He came crawling back to me begging to be taken back (sorry Buddy, you are already on The Bus)

4. I hooked up with Passenger Two...a post for another day

5. Ms Crazypants accused me of making crank calls to her place of business and generally suggested I was a stalker loony (sadly for her I was actually out of town in an area with no phone reception at the time)

I ran into Ms Crazypants again some years ago when I was co-owner/ editor of a small magazine. Shortly after seeing her all my advertisers were rung up by an anonymous woman complaining about magazine content and insisting they stop advertising with me. This generated great publicity for the magazine and the advertisers were thrilled that we were stirring up controversy. Clearly a woman to hold grudges. Equally clearly a woman who doesn't understand that creating buzz about a magazine is a GOOD thing.

Last I heard Mr Unfaithful Jerwad is engaged to another woman, he had been engaged to her for quite a long time...I wonder if she is also living across the road?