When I was around 55 I witnessed a word, and understood its true meaning, from the bus.

My office was in San Francisco and my home was in Berkeley, and that had been my geography for about 30 years, so I was used to the bus. I rode it home almost every night. I always sat on the starboard side, away from the setting sun. Usually I read while riding. Sometimes I snoozed. Invariably I began looking out the window once we left the freeway, checking out the street scene and preparing to disembark.

The first stop for most Berkeley-bound buses is at University Avenue and 6th Street. That’s where she was, apparently waiting for some other ride.

She was about my age, maybe a decade younger. She looked to be average in height, a little bulky in body, and she stood and dressed like a mannish Lesbian. She wore sensible androgynous shoes, practical blue jeans, a brown leather jacket over her t-shirt, no makeup or jewelry, short unstyled brown hair. Which is another way of saying she resembled many females in the area.

It was her t-shirt that caught my attention. The white fabric bore the word WHATEVER across the chest. I dislike the way we use that word in conversation. It seems to me to be the most passive-aggressive collection of syllables we ever hear. “Whatever” is what my kids say when they want to end the conversation and get away from me. “Whatever,” says my boyfriend, without a smile.

The thing about the dykish woman on the corner of 6th and University was the way her jacket gaped. The brown leather garment was not zipped and it pulled toward the shoulder where her bag was slung, so it fell open on her torso with its edges about 7 inches apart. It showed just half of the word on her t-shirt.

That’s when I saw the hate in wHATEver.