THE STORIES ALL AROUND US
I have returned to the transportation ways of when I was teenager. I don't own a car at the moment, and get around mostly by public transport. Which works well in the part of the city in which I live. Multiple forms of transportation exist all around me here where I am currently. Trains, trams, buses, and if need be I can walk. There is so much in close proximity to me. That is an advantage to the inner city environment.
For the past 10 years or so I have lived much further from the city. In car central, with its mutiple lane highways, its infrequent bus servces, and its 45 minute walk to the nearest train station. If you even had a train station. It's a different world out there. A world where even one car isn't enough. Most families have two.
And then there were the 1 hour commutes, at a minimum, just to get to work. And that would be travelling to the same side of the city. I can't imagine what those who had to cross town were going through. But they have my sympathies.
Now that all seems like a distant nightmare, long gone and left in the past. For the therapist's couch, perhaps. Today I can walk outside my door, down to the main road and around the corner to the nearest bus stop. Where I can catch a bus to the city, which on a good day, is about 20 minutes away. I say on a 'good day' because I'm not sure what they are anymore, transportation-wise.
I was on this particular bus the other day, making my way into the city where I planned to change to the light-rail service to the beach. And walk home. It makes for a 2 hour walk, but I enjoy it. Along the long stretch of beach here in Melbourne from the Port to the suburb of St.Kilda. It helps me clear my head, and re-energises me. It's exhausting on the legs, but liberating for my mind. It seems to help ideas to flow. And whilst it does that then I will continue to make this trip a couple of times per week.
I was sitting on the bus just looking out, not thinking of anything in particular, when I noticed an older man walk from the back and press the button to signal the driver to stop at the next bus stop. Not sure why I noticed this really, unless my mind had detected a future anomaly that required my current attention. Because it is what happened next that really piqued my interest.
The bus driver failed to stop, and so the man walked up to the front and told him so. I couldn't hear the comment, but it didn't appear to be have been spoken in an agressive manner. I thought nothing of it, except that I understood the man's upset as now he has to walk back. It's happened to me before. Frustrating, but certainly not the end of the world.
Except the bus driver didn't receive the questioning in the manner I thought it would have been received. No, instead he started to accuse the man of not having pushed the button in time, and how the rules don't allow him to stop as a result. Again, that's fine – except the man DID push it in time, I know because my mind prompted me to notice. And the bus driver spoke in the most whiny voice I have heard in a long time. He proceeded then to accuse the old man of yelling at him (if he did I failed to hear it), and that he had no right to yell at him as he was simply trying to do his job. Wow, I thought, I didn't see that coming.
When I had initially gotten onto the bus, as I scanned my ticket, I turned to the driver to thank him for stopping. Just a matter of courtesy I try to remember each time. I noticed him there in his booth. He was not a small man. I thought he could have been a bikie, with a long goatie, and very large solid frame. And to hear that whiny noise coming from him now, as he remonstrated with this older man about when buttons were pushed or not seemed farcical. Except it was reality, happening right in front of me.
It left me thinking the poor bus driver must cop it from every angle, every day of his life, for him to react like that. He has simply had enough. But that 'poor me' whining routine, that wasn't working for him. Not in my opinion.
He apologised to those of us still on the bus, once the passenger had alighted. I nodded in his direction. I didn't want to say anything. He's too fragile, I thought.
I looked back out the window at the world passing by. You don't see this driving to work in the car every day, I reminded myself.
I wondered, at the time, if there was a story in this. I looked back out at the world – there's probably a million more of them out there too, I thought.
Images sourced from unsplash.com.
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Notes From an Amateur Writer #1 - The Search For Inspiration
Notes From an Amateur Writer #2 - A Call to Action: Interacting With the World Outside of Me
Notes From an Amateur Writer #3 - Facing the Challenge
Notes From an Amateur Writer #4 - The Soundtrack to Grief and Loss
Notes From an Amateur Writer #5 - Music as a Catalyst for Imagination: Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing