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Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart

Oscar Wilde was right: ‘Expect the unexpected’. I’m a frequent bus rider with roving eyes, and open ears just waiting for something to catch their attention. It requires more than casual observation however: it requires being in the right place at the right time; seeing things as if they were unfolding stories: inverted U shaped (you often don’t have enough time on a bus to sort things into too many stages).

No, bus stories are best experienced as  three-act structures: setup, conflict, and resolution. I mean I’m just a spectator in the audience, not a theatre critic whose job is to submit analyses and criticisms for public awareness. What I witness is usually one of a kind; the play has only a limited engagement, there are no Broadway replays, no reruns of the drama in London’s West End.

Early on my trip one day, I noticed a man get on the bus and squeeze down the aisle to a seat across from me. Dressed in stained and ill-fitting jeans, and a grimy brown sweatshirt that barely accommodated his girth, he seemed to be breathing heavily as he sank into his seat. I assumed he was a labourer just returning home from his job-site. His hair had been hastily smoothed down on the top of his head, and his face wiped without the aid of a mirror, but he was pleasant enough and smiled at me when I glanced at him. He seemed tired though, and eventually closed his eyes to relax before his stop.

At first the bus was not full -nobody was standing in the aisle- but as we continued into town, stopping every block or so, the aisles began to fill. At the stop across from a busy restaurant, I could see a lineup waiting to get on. Most, of course, paid with their bus-cards at the front, so the line quickly shortened, albeit into an increasingly jammed bus. In situations like that, if the rear doors opened to allow someone to exit, a person could enter through the same back doors and flash their bus-card at the reader on the stanchion.

With a long line, I sometimes try for a rear door entry in the bus waiting at the ferry terminal -it is an accepted practice there, given the long lineups if various ferries arrive and discharge their load of passengers at the same time. I think the practice depends on the bus driver, however: at some locations it is not allowed.

Interestingly, in all buses, there is a big sign at the rear door warning that there is a fine of $173 if the fare is not paid. Since the usual fare is around $5, I don’t know how they arrived at 173 -it’s not even a multiple of 5…

But back to the play. The rapidly filling bus at the busy stop beside the restaurant, coupled with the long line of people waiting for it, a rear door entry must have been tempting to anybody quick enough to slip past any exiting passengers before the door closed again. It’s a game for the young; I doubt if I’d be quick enough.

At any rate, a young teenager with curly auburn hair and an innocent smile on his face made it onto the bus before the door closed. He was nicely, if predictably, dressed in jeans and a blue cloth jacket over a grey sweater -a next-door-neighbour kind of kid if I ever saw one. He pulled out his bus pass and held it to the reader on the pole. Nothing happened, so he tried it again but no bleep. He shrugged and looked around with a smile; he’d tried to pay, after all.

He put the card back in his pocket and was about to melt into the crowd when the bus driver who must have seen it through one of the overhead mirrors above the crowded aisle yelled at the kid for not paying.

The young man stepped back to the reader and tried again; once more no bleep, so the bus driver, now angry yelled at him to pay or get off the bus.

At this point, I suspected that something was amiss with the teenager. “Are you angry with me?” the boy asked politely in a loud enough voice to be heard over the now-almost silent passengers near the front. It was obvious that the boy didn’t really appreciate what he’d done wrong. “I tried my card several times and it didn’t work,” he yelled back, obviously confused at being accused of trying to cheat.

“Get off my bus,” was the driver’s response -now really angry. There was dead silence on the still stationary bus. Suddenly the labourer across the aisle from me opened his eyes, reached into his pocket and offered the boy some change to pay his fare.

There was some murmuring amongst the passengers near the driver and the bus suddenly started to move again. The boy, still confused but still smiling, tried to hand the money back to labourer, but the man just smiled and told him to keep it for a coffee.

I suppose this was just a small play I’d witnessed amongst many no doubt going on elsewhere on the crowded bus, but it seemed important to me. The boy had been uneasy with the crowd from the time he entered; he obviously wasn’t comfortable with so many people around him, and the unexpected anger of the bus driver seemed to do more than merely upset him. He didn’t react with a smirk, or curses; it clearly bothered him that the driver was angry at him even though he’d been trying to follow the rules. Watching his face shrivel, and the nervous movement of his hands at the driver’s angry voice, I almost expected to see tears. His treatment seemed so unfair; the boy appeared so innocent, so naïve.

Those passengers that couldn’t see what the fuss was all about soon carried on as if the whole scene was unimportant; the boy was a walk-on player with only a bit part in their lives. But I, who witnessed the drama from a privileged seat, saw it differently. The whole drama affected me as a good play will, and for some reason, I couldn’t help but recall the words of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as he reacts to the bad news afflicting him: ‘I am sick at heart… My way of life is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have -but in their stead: curses not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath which the poor heart must fain deny, and dare not…’

I don’t know why I get like that; maybe I’m more like the boy than I thought…

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