mary takes the wrong bus to the wrong metro line and meets the right people

this incident didn’t happen this week, but I remember it now because for most of this week I was so worked up about a couple of things that I couldn’t handle anything. any thing, like small, unrelated things, like noise, traffic, the metro, and moscow, and people. people walking slowly and getting in my way. people walking fast and pushing me. and people speaking russian. how dare they. so as i was being crushed into a crowd at belorusskaya metro station on tuesday i was near-meltdown... (when it’s crowded it’s like those videos you see of water buffalo or cattle crossing a river or something.... hundreds of people squish into the mouth of an escalator) so i bailed out of the stampede and headed home on foot...

and it was while i was stomping around the city tuesday night drenched in mud and ire i remembered how one night in november i left school, at 7:30, ran down the hill to the road just as the minibus was approaching the stop, and of course i assumed it was my minibus (HELLO, it arrived just when I did) so I got on it and tuned out. Then I got out when it stopped.... at not a place I recognized. I asked some of the other passengers for this one metro station, they pretty much said, no way, not that metro station, but here’s this other one. turns out i had been there too and totally knew my way home as soon as i saw it, but these two ladies from the bus, it seemed, had established with some dismay that i lived in russia and did not speak russian, that i was here by myself, and that I appeared not to know how to get home from work. clearly, i was a danger to myself. they were both several decades older than me, had a commanding air about them, and so as they talked over what route would be best for me to take and what they were going to do about me, i realized i would have to play along (which wasn't hard to do, since i certainly didn't know how to say in russian 'it's okay, i was mistaken at first but i know where i am now and i'll be fine'). They made a decision, told me the name of my station and the number of stops like six times, and hauled me onto a seat with them on the metro. at one point i leaned forward to double-check the stations on the map and one of them whacked me and said, in English: ‘Don’t Vourry. We will put you.’ And they did.