Here's what morning is like for ninety percent of employed America. You slap the snooze button on your alarm clock a few hundred times, and when you finally get up you're late. You take a ten-second shower, zip a comb across your head, jam a piece of toast in your gob and then floor that Taurus like Mario Andretti in the vain hope you'll get to work before your boss starts interviewing for your replacement.

And here's what it's like for the other ten percent -- the ten percent who ride the bus. You slap the snooze button on your alarm clock a few hundred times, and when you finally get up you're late. You take a ten-second shower, zip a comb across your head, jam a piece of toast in your gob and then run to the bus stop.

Where you stand for half an hour, wandering into the road at five-minute intervals, wondering if maybe this is a holiday that nobody ever heard of. Finally a bus approaches at something like three miles an hour. The driver slides the door open and greets every new passenger individually. "Hey, girl!" he calls to an old woman with a cane. "How you doin'?" To a shopper: "Can I help you with those packages?" To a guy with a bagel: "Hey, can I have a bite of that?"

You find a clean place to stand and eventually the driver pulls back into traffic. "Ain't this a nice day?" he says to nobody in particular. "My rheumatism's acting up a bit, though. Oops: the light's green, but better safe than sorry. They don't stay green forever, you know!"

You check your watch. Eight minutes per block, three minutes per stop. Your ETA at the office: nine p.m. Sunday night.

When by some miracle you finally get to work, everybody's gone to lunch. In fact, right now they're chugging their second margarita, wondering whether it's drugs or sexual addiction that's responsible for your chronic tardiness.

Nope, it's mass transportation, and it's like this on every bus, in every nation, all across the globe. Why? Because there's one fatal flaw that transforms buses from vital tools of mass transportation to waiting rooms of mass frustration: Everybody on a bus is in a hurry to get somewhere.

EXCEPT FOR THE DUDE AT THE WHEEL.

See, the driver isn't in a hurry. He's already at work. He's DRIVING. He could care less when or if he gets anywhere. He's getting paid for sitting there. In fact, he'd much rather just sit there at the bus stop than move forward, since stationary vehicles are substantially less likely to flatten a wayward senior citizen and put a blot on his permanent record.

Which is why buses are far more suitable for, say, killing an afternoon, or providing inexpensive air conditioning, than actually taking you somewhere you have to go.

After a bit of thought, though, I realized there's a simple solution that could transform buses back into modes of transportation. When the very first passenger gets on a bus, the driver relinquishes his seat and moves to the back of the bus. The passenger pilots the thing to all the various stops while the driver waves to the guys in the barber shop, complains about his sleep apnea, and asks Miss Linda how she likes the new pastor at their church.

And for once, a bus will actually make it through a green light that's eight feet away. For once, the passengers will smile instead of feel their blood pressures skyrocket. For once, when another bus passes from the other direction, instead of yelling "Hey, how ya doin'?" or "Hot enough for ya?" the drivers will call to each other and for the first times in their lives say something like, "Whoa! I didn't even know this thing had a second gear!"