Membership Has Its Privileges

A couple of days ago, I get on the bus with my UT jacket on and student card in hand. I flash the driver (MY BUS PASS, PEOPLE - don't be dirty) my bus pass and show him my student card.



He looks at me and says "So, how was school?"

"Great, thanks," I say and move off to sit down.

I reach my destination and get off the bus to wait for the next one. Of course, the driver also gets off the bus and starts a conversation with me.

"I didn't think you were a student" *What? Now I look old too? Fantastic. Winnipeg also prematurely ages people. That figures* "But when you said school was good I believed you, otherwise you would never have said it." *Huh? Okaaaaaaaay* He starts to eat his lunch from a thermos. It's soup. Smells good. Starts to talk about zur, a Polish soup. He spells it for me: Z-with-a-dot-on-top-U-R.

"Oh, zur," I say. "I know zur. Very yummy."

He stares at me for a beat, shell-shocked. "You're Polish?"

"Yes," I say. "I was even born in Poland."

"Where?" He asks the question that every Polish person asks of another.

"Krakow."

"Ah, I was born in..." He names a place up north that I can no longer remember, but probably would if I knew my Polish geography better. So much for that year-long Polish course doing me any good!

"If I knew you were Polish," he says to me, he says, "I would have been nicer to you!" He's joking of course, but there is a ring of truth to it. Polish people are always nicer to you, once they find out you yourself are Polish. That works for me.

I ran into him again yesterday, on a different bus route. He didn't want to see my pass and he told me to study hard.

I guess being Polish does have its privileges. Even in Winnipeg.