The perils of public transportation

I haven't owned a car for more then 15 years, so I am a veteran of public transportation. And by default, so is Liam. We hop on the bus to get pretty much every where we go.

I am also one of those slightly crazed, hyper vigilant, kinda OCD people. I will check my purse 10 times to make sure I have bus tickets, even though the walk to the bus is only 5 minutes. I won't close the driver door until Liam is out of a car so that he doesn't accidentally get locked in. I ramble on to him when we walk about looking out for cars that are backing up or making sure that he can see a driver's eyes before he starts to cross the road.

So when we went to get off the bus today I didn't foresee any problems. Liam knows not to stand up before the bus stops so that he doesn't fall. And he knows that I go out the doors first because he's not heavy enough to activate them to open, and if I'm already out, I can help him down (those steps are high).

Well......

I stepped down, the doors opened, I got out and in the nano-second it took me to turn around and hold Liam's hand the doors slammed shut and the bus started to drive away! With me still holding Liam's hand on the outside of the bus, while the rest of his body was on the inside!

Needless to say I was not very calm about the situation! The driver stopped pretty quickly and released the doors. Liam was not hurt, but was shaken and MAD at the driver. The driver parked and came out to make sure we were okay. I'm one of those women that tears up when I'm angry, so I end up looking like a sniveling fool. I kept my cool so as to not further upset Liam, made sure that Liam was not hurt and told the driver that we were fine and that he had better pay closer attention to his passengers and less attention to getting to the next stop on time.

Of course this happened on our way to somewhere today, so we had to take another bus to get home. Liam tried everything he could to convince me that we should just walk. I very much wanted him to get back on the horse, so to speak, since if he develops a bus phobia, our lives are going to be very complicated. I assured him as best I could that everything would be okay and promised him that we would exit by the front door so that the driver would be guaranteed to see us. When it was time for us to get off Liam shouted at the top of his lungs to the driver "Make sure the doors stay open!"

Phew, what a day! His arm is okay, there doesn't seem to be any lasting fear of the bus, but I suspect he's not going to be exiting by the back doors any time soon. And if I thought I was hyper-vigilante before, then I'm not sure what level of neurosis this incident has pushed me to!