Riding the bus has been much more pleasant since I met the Eco Pass Lady.

The Eco Pass Lady appears on ads posted inside Denver's buses and trains. She's an attractive Asian woman in her mid-thirties, and she has something to say: I save money all year long riding with my Eco Pass. Plus, my employer saves money on taxes. Bring your company on board today! She states her case with passion and clarity -- after that pitch, who could fail to understand that to ride the bus or train without an Eco Pass is to commit the gravest of errors?

I like the Eco Pass Lady's simple and efficient style. She wears little makeup, and her hair is cut in a no-nonsense, shoulder-length style that I bet looks great with a suit and heels. In the picture, however, she's wearing a sleeveless blouse that reveals her bare shoulders. (She probably goes to the gym after work.) The look on her face says, "Can we move this along? I'm in a hurry." I expect the Eco Pass Lady doesn't take any shit from anyone. If the Eco Pass Lady was riding on the bus in front of a bunch of subliterate troglodytes cussing every other word and hollering about their sex lives, she wouldn't hesitate to turn around and say, "I'm working on something very important here. Would you mind keeping your voices down and watching your language?" They would listen, too.

According to her ID card, the Eco Pass Lady's real name is Jill Smith, and she works as an accountant for A to Z Company. I'm pretty sure that's not her real name. I think they just made it up for the Eco Pass ad. The Eco Pass Lady seems like she would take pride in her Asian heritage -- her real name is probably something like Maxine Wong. That's a really sexy name, I think. I'm not trying to be creepy or anything, like I have a fetish for women with Asian names. I just think the Eco Pass Lady looks more like a Maxine Wong than a Jill Smith, and if her name was Maxine Wong, (or Kathy Nguyen), that would be totally hot, although if it was Jill Smith that would be okay with me too, because Asian women don't have to be named Chang or Kim or Thanh. They can have names like Jones or Brown or Roberts; it's just that those names don't turn me on as much. I mean, you know.

I'm just saying.

Sometimes I think about if the Eco Pass Lady sat next to me on the train. I'm sure she wouldn't pay me any attention -- she'd just concentrate on her Wall Street Journal. I wouldn't make a big deal about her being the Eco Pass Lady, because she probably gets that all the time. I'd wait a few minutes, and then lean over and say, "Don't believe a word they're saying here. There's no way June sauerkraut futures are going above 12. In fact, if you're holding June sauerkraut at 10, I'd dump it immediately." She would demand to know why I thought so, and I would confide that sauerkraut futures are kind of a hobby of mine.

Eventually she would ask if I had an Eco Pass, and I would have to finesse it. "My company won't get on board," I would say. "I've told them, like, ten times about saving money on taxes and all, but they're a bunch of assholes." Then, maybe, she would say she had some additional information at her home, and I could have it if I thought it would help bring my company on board and if I didn't mind stopping in for a few minutes. "Sure, that would be cool," I would say, although I would try not to sound too eager.

+posted by Lawrence @ 2/14/2004 11:56:00 PM