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Where are we going?

Four old men and I were sitting in the uncomfortable senior’s section in the front of a city bus. The row of seats all faced the aisle and a tiny sign on the windows on each side reminded users that the seats were for seniors, but were retractable in case somebody in a wheel chair, or baby in a pram needed the extra room. But we all knew that: we were seniors, after all, and not only entitled to the seats, but also our old fashioned wrinkled clothes, and twinkling, experienced eyes.

Although we were all forced to sit side by side, none of us knew each other; that became evident when a grey-haired man across the aisle from me in a tired looking black sweatshirt and soiled grey sweatpants tried to explain to the man in a rumpled charcoal suit sitting next to him how to buy a ticket at the ferry terminal where we all were heading.

At first, the man to whom he was offering advice simply continued his clumsy attempts to hit the little keys on his cell phone with an index finger. Then he tucked his rolling suitcase between his legs in the jiggling bus, before finally looking at the stranger next to him. “I’m actually from this area. I’ve just come back from working abroad for a few years, and I only wondered if the ferry tickets might have changed… Everything else has…”

“No, no, no,” his friendly questioner, shook a finger slowly at him and continued with a delightful south Asian accent. “The Ferry Corporation changes slowly. Very slowly,” he said in carefully pronounced words, and then blinked. I don’t think it was a wink, because he immediately rubbed his eyes. “At the ferry terminal only the prices change… And, of course, the air quality from the forest fires near here…” he continued, glancing at the orange sky through the window.

The suitcase-man smiled and nodded his head in agreement. “What’s happening to the world, nowadays?” Then he shook his head, although I barely noticed the movement; the bus was rattling over an unrepaired section of asphalt on the road at the time. “Well, at least I’m back in Canada now -and I sure hope my kids have air conditioning,” he added, wiping the sweat off his brow. “Few places in Britain seem to have any…”

A man sitting beside sweat-pants chuckled affably and nodded his head. He was at least dressed in stylish pale grey pants that had been recently pressed, and an uncreased  blue cotton shirt open at the collar. “Climate change is happening everywhere,” he observed, smiling.

I was sitting across the aisle from them, but my neighbour snuffled and his head suddenly swivelled up from his chest where it had been bobbing throughout the trip; then he wiped his nose with his wrist. “Our neighbours down south say they don’t believe in climate change…” He was wearing brown knee-length shorts and a grey sweat-stained shirt with its sleeves rolled up almost to his armpits.

“Then how do they account for the smoky skies and the natural disasters?” grey pants asked, shaking his head at their naïveté.

“They think it’s all our fault,” my neighbour countered. “They’re more upset about our smoke than the tornadoes, and floods they’ve been getting.”

“I suppose you have to blame somebody though, eh?” suitcase-man added. “They were doing a lot of blaming in England, I’ll tell you.”

“People are like that don’t you think?” grey-pants added. “Once they’re in government, anyway…”

Sweat pants guffawed. “Next they’ll be trying to charge us for the smoke damage…”

I couldn’t keep the smile off my face and pretended to watch the road through the front windshield. It was like sitting in a pub on Saturday night.

“Wouldn’t put it past them…” grey-pants added, really seeming to get into the accusation.

Suitcase man, obviously considering himself more cosmopolitan than the rest of us, began to shake his head like an annoyed professor. “But isn’t that what we’re doing: just shifting the blame elsewhere…?”

Grey-pants stared at him for a moment and then smiled. “You a diplomat, or something…?”

Suitcase-man shook his head and rolled his eyes briefly. “I’m an ‘or something’ I guess… but no, I travel a lot and am always surprised at how each country seems to judge the others by their own cultures; their own values…”

“But climate change isn’t just a value…” Grey pants had abandoned his smile and seemed suddenly serious. “It’s something that’s affecting us already,” he added, glancing out of the window at the strange colour of the sky.

Everybody but suitcase man nodded in agreement. “We all look for excuses,” suitcase said, also glancing out of the window. “The British, the Americans, the Europeans… even those of us in Canada fall into the same trap: using the right doom-laden words, making token changes, and then hoping that everything will work out.” He shook his ahead sadly.

I could feel short-pants, shifting a bit in his seat beside me as he stared at the men on the opposite side of the aisle for a moment: the seniors. “All we old folks seem to do is shift the blame. The other guys started the war; that country doesn’t have proper safeguards; those folks should do things like we do… only we are just as guilty. We should know better by now: but it’s still a classic case of the blind leading the blind!”

“Whoa…” sweat-pants shook his head slowly. “Did this all start from my advice to my neighbour about buying ferry tickets…?” When the others merely stared at him, he continued. “Maybe we old guys are too late to solve the climate problem, but we can still teach by example: things like cooperation, charity, helping others who might benefit from our assistance… When you think about it, there are very few other things which Age has to offer the world except advice. It’s why we tried to teach our children the difference between right and wrong.”

“And do you think they listened?” grey pants asked, shaking his head doubtfully.

Sweat-pants smiled and nodded his head as if the sky outside had suddenly cleared and the blue had reappeared. “I suppose they should have paid more attention to us, eh?” And he shook his head sadly at the thought.

All this talk seemed to be going nowhere, so I finally joined in. “But, did we listen?”

“To whom?” grey pants asked.

“To our parents…” I answered and stood to leave as the bus pulled up to the ferry terminal. I was the first to get off, and left the rest of them rolling their eyes. But still, some things just had to be acknowledged I thought as I coughed in the smoky air outside the bus.

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