Spate of late

By Jim

TriMet is a complex, dynamic nonlinear system. That's why a woman who got pregnant three years ago put my job at risk.

It's "the butterfly effect." That's the theory that something small, the swimming of a sperm in Portland or the flapping of a butterfly's wings in China, could cause something large, the loss of my job or a tornado in Kansas.

So the No. 44 pulls into the stop across the street from the Jewish community center. There's Mom with her gigantic baby stroller, waiting. Great, I think, with the mindset of an oft-burned, burned-out commuter, this is going to take an extra five minutes to lower the lift, get her stroller on it, raise the lift, get the stroller on the bus, and lower the lift again, to hoist Mom herself onto our bewheeled slave ship. And Mom probably won't have her fare ready to put in the box.

Wrong! Not five minutes. Much longer.

The driver presses the button to lower the lift. It stops halfway down, sticking out over the sidewalk, pointing at Mom like a cosmic middle finger. The driver presses the button again. The lift is stuck. The driver presses the button at least 20 more times. Then -- newsflash -- he says to Mom: "The lift isn't working."

Instead of walking away, Mom stands there, expectantly, looking at the lift. The bus driver begins pressing the button again, maybe 15 more times. Nothing, not even a mechanical grunt. "It's still not working," he says. She stands there. Then the driver tries to get the lift to come back up. It won't move. He presses the button repeatedly. "It won't come up, either," he says.

The driver reminds me of computer tech support guys: "Have you tried rebooting?" "Yes," I tell them, "three times." Then they always say, "I'd try it again."

Now just two days before this great sperm/butterfly fiasco, every single person in our little work group had been late. Our boss sternly reminded everyone that if we want to get paid for a full shift, maybe we ought to work a full shift. Hard to argue with that logic.

Mom had already doomed me, though. I would be late, at the worst possible time. The question was only: How late would I be?

"Is there another bus coming?" somebody asks the driver.

"Probably," the driver says. He's a regular Vegas oddsmaker.

In about 10 minutes, the No. 1 shows up. Twenty riders on the beached 44 jump off and, like escaping rats, board the 1 -- which takes an agonizingly slow, circuitous route behind Wilson High School. It will eventually get downtown, but it ages you.

Obviously, I was late for work. But it wasn't my fault. Thanks again, TriMet.

Listen, if you think you're going to get pregnant, let me know, and I'll give you a condom. Twenty years from now, when the kid you didn't have is not a drug-addicted high school dropout still living at home, you'll thank me. You might even call it "the butterfly effect."