The bus, the ham, the wet seat, and the smell... (my first scootypuff sighting) Today I hailed a bus. This is a rant about what followed because I had to get it off my chest. There are several disparate aspects of this story, which I promise will all be tied together by the end, so bear with me. I don't know, you may guess it before you read it. I had to wait while a ham got on before me, because she was in a motorised wheelchair. I was a bit annoyed at this because you have to wait for the bus driver to let down a ramp and it takes forever for that. Common courtesy dictates that you wait for the person who needs the ramp to get on/off first. I was feeling impatient and hating how long it took for the ramp thing to happen; however, I decided to withhold judgement unless I got more information. There could be any number of non-ham-related reasons for the chair and to me there is a distinction between being pissed off at a person who is a ham but needs a chair for a legit disability, and a person who 'needs' a chair because they're a ham. That is--the former type would still need the chair if they weren't a ham, so it's not fair to be pissed off at them for taking so long because of something they can't change (the disability). Even though having a chair is no excuse for being a ham.  I hope I am explaining myself coherently enough not to get banned. In other words: ham = ugh, chair = possibly excusable unless proven otherwise. I did not want to find myself accidentally rolling my eyes at someone who was taking forever to get on a bus only to find out that this time taken was because they had a real disability. So she puffed onto the bus, and sat in the middle of the front section, which lets you flip up chairs to make more space for prams, wheelchairs, etc. I decided to sit on the first seat I came across, only to immediately feel damp sinking into my jeans. Ew. I hoped to god it was water, took a cautious sniff, and determined it must be. Still, embarrassing and gross. I ended up taking a new seat behind the ham, again hating the damp feeling on my butt but hoping it would dry off. And it was only water, so I wouldn't ruin the day of the next person to sit there. But as the bus got moving I gradually became aware of an awful public-toilet-like smell. Dried urine. Oh shit. It was pee. How the hell does that even *happen *on a bus seat? I'd thought it was water! god, now I'd ruined a second seat on the bus. I felt so sorry for the person who had to clean this shit up. I felt like the worst citizen in the world (you may have noticed I have a very low guilt threshold). I sat there for the next eight minutes, agonisingly conscious of the smell rising around me. Hoping nobody else had noticed. Screaming internally for my stop. Somebody else got onto the bus and was about to sit in that very same seat. I called out, "Oh, don't sit there, it's wet!". She thanked me, didn't sit down, and we kept going. When I got off the bus, I awkwardly moved past all the people who were sitting in front of me, hoping they weren't getting a whiff of what I'd sat in. Told the bus driver that there was some nasty smell around the wet seat and asked him to get somebody to clean it. By implication, I hoped he realised that all the other seats including my second seat would need a going over. And then finally I was off the bus and by the road and it was just me and the smell, the source of which I was trying very hard not to think about. It took about thirty seconds after I started walking back to my house to realise that the smell was no longer there. Was it the fresh air? Ten minutes later I got back home, took off my jeans, and gave them a very cautious sniff. No smell. It had been water after all. The dried urine smell had been emanating from the ham sitting in front of me. I am now sure she was in a scootypuff purely because she was overweight. As far as I am aware, people with disabilities do everything they can to preserve their own dignity, and that includes finding ways to not sit in their own filth. Obeasts, as frequently documented by this sub, tend to have no shame.  This woman was alone without a carer, and seemed intelligent enough get around by herself. Ergo, she could clean herself if she cared (hell, she could have gone and bought some wipes from the pharmacy 200 metres away, and then gone to the public toilets close to that) but she clearly didn't. In conclusion: Goddamn that scootypuff taking forever to get on the bus and making me think I stank of urine. No sympathy. tl;dr: saw a scootypuff ham for the first time in Australia, sat in something wet on the bus, moved to a seat behind her, smelt urine and thought it was what I'd sat it. It wasn't. edited for clarity, and also sorry this was so long. Gotta vent somewhere.