MTA’s OK by me ... at least this week

I’ve always depended on the kindness of the MTA.

Well, not always, but more than once. Especially bus drivers. Specifically the one I had Saturday, who opened the closed-up bus so we could go in and look for my keys.

I had been riding rattled, pondering problems both personal and political. Then came the passenger reaction and extensive drama related to the news of our M104 being rerouted. Soon after, I found myself standing at the open back door. My stop. I wondered whether to walk through and out. Should I really get off this thing? What about the nagging sense that I do not have my keys? They’re attached to a MetroCard holder I bought at the Transit Museum at Grand Central. It’s a cute arrangement, but a little bulky. And in that moment — missing.

I knew it was wrong to get off the bus. I did it anyway. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of making a mistake as you’re making it. I read once about a woman who felt that way walking down the aisle.

So then I was standing at the curb, looking down, wondering why I was able to keep track of two newspapers and one library book, a wallet, lots of coins, but not the keys. I looked down in the gutter, as if I might have dropped them there. No. That wouldn’t be logical. They’re on the bus.

I pondered my next move. This was going to require some sort of movement, like maybe even running. Ugh. Or at least a jog — my version of running. It was half-hearted, with me exerting just enough energy to startle a family touring Columbia University but not enough to catch the bus. The question loomed: where does a rerouted M104 bus go? Once I got back to Broadway, I wondered whether the bus was back on Broadway. I looked at the map at the bus stop. It turns out that the M104’s last stop is at Amsterdam and 129th Street, in case you didn’t realize.

I knew my next move, either from real life or having seen it in a movie. Either way, I hailed the green cab and told the driver we were on a mission to find my keys on the bus I had just left. He took me to 129th, stopping conveniently right behind a big vehicle with blinking lights. My bus. Without an actual driver. The kind cabbie pointed toward the little booth with an MTA employee, a helpful fellow who got to hear my tale and speedily pointed to a woman walking by both of us. “Is that her?” he said.

It was her. I told her that I had the keys when I got on her bus. She said she didn’t know what I had done — a defensive response from someone who’s been blamed by too many passengers who have not kept track of their crap. But she immediately unlocked the bus and went on with me, saying we could take a look. She pointed. The keys were snuggled in the space between the seat and the windowed wall.

It wasn’t the first time. I lost a much-loved bag about a decade ago, left it on the bus and then went to the depot in Inwood. I got the bag back and fell in love with the depot. You simply have to visit that place. They should give tours. It makes tangible the hugeness and the humanness of the bus system.

So ... thanks, MTA. When I hear the agency acronym I reflect on the bad times, sure. The late trains and the crowded buses. But sometimes I also think of the actual people who have helped reacquaint me with my stuff.