Terminating Early
This bus is terminating here…
I’ve been really upset with London busses over the past couple of weeks. Like, unreasonably upset with them. They’ve always been terrible, I don’t know why we expect those who hurt us in life to change - they never do. I suppose we have to have hope, to get us through.
I think you just notice it more when you work full time. You’re on the bus more often. And as a result, you get to experience the predictable horror of it, over and over and over again. Optimistic school kids and broken middle aged lost souls, all crammed in together - two demographics that shouldn’t commune this early in the day. Luckily, the school kids are too preoccupied with their Prime energy drinks and future prospects to notice that those very ‘prospects’ are right there beside them, looking through a Metro they hate, at a news story about a politician they hate, scared that the world they hate might be coming to an abrupt end.
And then the bus stops. Everyone has to get off because the driver has announced that, due to a mysterious change of plan, we’re terminating early. It’s happening more and more often, and the driver used to tell us why. They used to tell us before we got on the bus, even. If you ask them ‘why’ now, they’re nonchalant - just following orders. It’s ’not up to them’ - the bus tells them what to do. Who’s driving who here?
You find yourself upset that you’re going to be late for a job you don’t even want to be at, and you can feel that everyone around you feels exactly the same about it and yet, no one says anything and that makes it all feel so much worse.
Except the bus driver doesn’t seem unhappy. They’re smiling. They wave to their driver colleagues, passing by in the opposite direction. They always wave - as if they haven’t seen one another for years. As if they aren’t on predesignated, repeating routes. Sometimes they chat from cab to cab, completely unafraid of passing cyclists - just happy to be driving a bus. Their life’s dream realised. Ding ding!
Maybe I should learn to drive a bus. Maybe that’s where the real freedom is. Safe and sound inside a little perspex cab, not even responsible for handling change anymore. Freedom.
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