Being a pedestrian in Los Angeles is like showing up uncaffeinated to a classroom of seventh-graders. Not an impossible pursuit, but certainly a challenging one and likely to rouse the not unfounded concern of everyone who already questioned why you uprooted yourself across the Pacific Ocean to come to this smoggy, starstruck city in the first place. Perhaps one of the questions that I’ve heard most often since moving here is, What do you mean you never learned to drive?

To that I say, well, I never needed to before. Growing up in China was not quite the dystopian communist nightmare as western media, both liberal and conservative, paint it to be. Just like America, we have our fair share of income inequality too. But disregarding the free- market reforms embraced in the post-Mao era, China remains a collective culture at heart. In my thirteen years in Shanghai, I witnessed the city’s metro system expand from three lines to thirteen, tunneling at breakneck pace across the urban underground. Public transportation was a recognized common good, an economical boon for swaths of middle-class commuters, and a cleaner alternative to the fuel economy, which was prone to gas-guzzling the air quality index literally off the charts. Never mind that the city was eight times the size of Manhattan, if I needed to get from one arcane end to another, there would be a way. And if not, then the municipal authorities would make a way, and no, they did not care if the ever-delightful symphony of subway excavation intruded upon your backyard.

Spoiled by this combination of comprehensive transportation infrastructure and government overreach, I found Los Angeles challenging to say the least. Thankfully, Westwood was stocked with nearly all the possible grocery stores, commercial necessities, and frivolous distractions that a young college student would need. Should I have a sudden craving for a scenic hike or authentic Asian food, I could always seek the kindness of friends with cars. Of course, given my inherent personality and inherited trauma, the last thing I ever wanted to be was a burden to others. So, rather than obtain a license and registration of my own, I did the next reasonable thing and memorized all pertinent bus schedules.

I could tell you how to get anywhere from campus. Spontaneous beach day? Take the Big Blue Bus 2 to Santa Monica, the 1 to Venice. Headed to Korean barbecue? Walk to Wilshire/ Westwood and hop on the 720. Need to go downtown? R12 to Rancho Park Station and then board the train to 7th Street Metro Center. Of course, your commute might take twice as long compared to driving, but you would’ve just spent that time finding parking anyways. Yes, public transport was crowded and rife with unpleasant smells and passengers of questionable intoxication levels. Yes, it ran late more often than not. Sometimes, a bus that was due to arrive in one minute would disappear from the route the next time I checked Google Maps. In those instances, there was nothing stopping my two feet. Let the story of how far I’ve walked for a cone of ice cream be recorded here for historical posterity (4.7 miles to be exact, thank you West Hollywood Salt and Straw).

Honestly, the car-free life is workable. Like in Shanghai, there is always a way to get where I need to go. I just have to be clever, tenacious, and occasionally outrageous about it. But what I view as indefatigable street savvy, my friends see as a stubborn refusal to adapt. Los Angeles is impossible to survive without a motorized vehicle. These are the terms and conditions of the city. I had signed my acceptance the moment that I showed up with a suitcase and a student visa. So, Jemma, when are you ever going to get your license? Half the time the question is uttered in concern, half the time as a joke in droll acknowledgement that the day might never come.

Even after graduating college, I did not cave. I was just starting a career in public education. I could not afford a replacement for my outdated iPhone, let alone a car. Thankfully, the school I work at is only a short bus ride away from my apartment. Mondays through Fridays, I board the 6:54AM bus heading west towards Venice. Once, I overheard the bus driver training a new hire. He muttered that one’s a regular, and I knew that I had made it. No matter the early morning congestion or claustrophobic crowding, I am now, as the youth say, a ridah.

And they said it because they saw me. I know the children of the commute, both on my roster and off. The ones I teach directly would smile– nervous and polite– whenever we made eye contact. It always amuses me, the way they overshared to me within the classroom, but seemed so hesitant outside. The others, faces I recognize but do not know beyond the bus, are too shy to speak to me directly. But I see their darting eyes, hear the indiscernible mumbles to their friends around them. I am probably overthinking how much their adolescent brains are fascinated with the sight of me on the bus, this liminal space where I had neither the obligation to act as teacher nor freedom to fully inhabit my off-campus self. These kids catch me in the interstices of schoolyard and street, and in that, I acknowledge a certain vulnerability. Would they hear my grumbling, cuss-ridden phone calls after lousy workdays? Would they witness my raw discomfort as I brushed off catcalls from men who lounged in the backseat? God forbid, would they see me forgo my independent reading book to Instagram-stalk strangers?

Even students who walk or carpool to school know of my public transit exploits. Several have come up to me in class chirping, we saw you waiting for the bus yesterday! then produce photographic proof of me to confirm it. Once, I was at the stop when one of my eighth graders hollered a greeting from her passing car window, prompting her well-meaning mother to offer do you need a ride? The kid was mortified, but not as much as I was when, after kindly refusing, her mom pressed on with when are your parents going to pick you up?

I don’t fault her for the confusion. I have the face of a sixteen-year-old and often get mistaken for an eighth grader within the halls of Twain. Against the throng of high schoolers also waiting impatiently for the 33, I am virtually indistinguishable. I wonder sometimes if taking transit draws even more attention to my youthfulness, which so often thwarts my attempts to command the respect of students and colleagues alike. I have once been asked by a student, are you just not old enough to drive yet? And if not age, is this just another glaring indicator of the chasm between me and mainstream America? I am not ashamed of my upbringing, but there are moments I tire at constant reminders of all the ways I grew up different.

But as with so many moments of past alienation, I find solace and fragments of common ground between the pages of the much-loved books. In Pride and Prejudice, after Elizabeth Bennet walks three miles through the English countryside to attend to her sick sister, Mr. Bingley’s snobby family scoffs at her muddied dress: she has nothing, in short, to recommend her but being an excellent walker. But it is Lizzy’s foot-slogging, decorum-flouting determination that makes her our heroine. Likewise, in Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse brags that her uncle was arrested for being a pedestrian. What’s that mean? Ethan asks the day we study that chapter in class. Joey answers, it’s someone who doesn’t use a car.

Oh, like Ms. Tan.

I nod. And why would that be illegal?

A pause, before Elodie reliably answers, Because it’s not normal. Everyone in this society wants to go fast with technology. Not having a car goes against that.

Ms. Tan, is someone going to arrest you? Jordan jokes. Better get your license then.

I laugh with him but maintain my ground. I like not having a car, I insist, hoping I don’t sound so blatantly defensive of both the obvious inconveniences of pedestrian life and Bradbury’s on-the-noise critique of modern consumerism. Yes, it can be slow and inefficient. But you notice things more. You pay attention.

Just as I have taught them, they demand evidence for my claims. So, I tell them how one night some anti-vaxxers, upset with the recent public health mandates, vandalized the pavement outside the staff parking lot. The graffiti remained unnoticed until the next morning when I mentioned it to our custodian. None of the other teachers or administrators had even realized. And that’s why we don’t have fake news written on the sidewalk. The kids concede a shrugging makes sense to my anecdote, and I figure that’s the best I’ll get today. There are other ways to resist in this city; they don’t have to be walkers to take it to the streets.

Lately, I have found myself on the receiving end of reluctant commendation. The same friends that scoffed at my carlessness now bemoan ever-surging gas prices. You were smart not to get a car, they begrudge, in this economy? And yes, I’m not so saintly as to not derive a little pleasure from their griping– I’ve earned it after years of tolerating their furrowed brows and cavalier judgments. Although my bank account thanks me daily, the truth is that public transportation has never been a bottom-line matter for me. Rather, it is a reminder that though I came to this country alone, I am part of something more than myself. The bus lines are arteries that connect me to the beating pulse of this city and its people who have become my people. This commute is community.

As we pass by boulevards of purple jacarandas and streetside taquerias, I sit on a fuzzy green seat and flip through sheafs of “I Am” poems from my students. The road is not an ideal spot for grading, but when my phone exhausts me of distractions, it is nice sometimes just to read. In her trademark scrawl, Sasha has penned straight bussin, I am a rider of the 33, and I grin as I decipher it, her buoyant spitfire nearly leaping off the page. I find my pen, carve out a corner in the margins. Me too.

Jemma J. Tan was born in Singapore, Made in China, and now calls Los Angeles home. She was the 2020 Veritas Forum/Augustine Collective commencement speech winner (published in COMMENT magazine), a 2021 finalist in the CRAFT Literary First Chapters contest, and a 2022 Summer Fellow at the UCLA Writing Project. In her spare time, she teaches seventh grade English.