But we're always alone, right? Ha! Famous last words. And what better setting for playing this out but on public transit? I was boarding the bus, a long articulated model, then walked toward the back in search of a seat. There were passengers lining side seats on both sides of the aisle. Balancing with my big umbrella and shoulder bag, it was inevitable that I would be knocking into others and I apologized all the way to my seat. I heard something come loose, turned around, and saw a young man belonging to an unidentifiable visible minority scrambling as his spilled coffee ran down his pants and flowed onto the floor, a double-double from Tim Horton's. (I never go to Tim Horton's. Don't ask; don't tell). I apologized, of course, though I did feel a certain annoyance with this young twenty-something. It wasn't till I got off the bus that it occurred to me that I could only have knocked over his coffee had it been hanging right over the aisle. I tried to figure out why it would be hanging over the aisle. Then the light came on. The little dumbass was so busy bent over fiddling with his phone in one hand, his coffee in the other that it didn't even occur to him that 1. he was not the only person on the bus that day, and, 2. he was not the only person living on this planet.
That's right, Gentle Reader, I am blaming the victim. He should have known better than be so inexcusably stupid and for that reason got exactly what he deserved: Natural Selection 101. Yes, I feel badly for the part I played, and even more so because it was so beyond my control, making it not harder but easier for me to blame myself. There is no way that I want to be party to another's dismay, discomfort or suffering. That said, I am also hoping that I have done an invaluable, if unwitting, favour, to the self-absorbed little dumbass.
We are increasingly living as though nobody else matters. We segregate ourselves into our little private bubble and we expect it to protect us and carry us along across the day, whether on public transport, in a coffee shop, on the sidewalk, or wherever. No one exists but me. It is all about me and my little world: my likes, my interests, my friends, my preferences. Of the noisome rabble around me only those matter who will help me get what I want. No one else exists.
Remember the iPhone's precursor, the Blackberry? Also called Crackberry because it was so addictive and so adapted to self-absorption and short attention spans. Now, everyone has one of those objectionable little phones. They don't have to pay attention to their surroundings, nor be polite nor even civil to the stranger next to them. We live as if no one else really matters.
For this reason I am rather glad that I spilled that little idiot's coffee all over him and on the floor of the bus, not because I wished him harm but so that he would wake up, and knowing that it would take more than Tim Horton's coffee to wake him from his coma.
He got off the bus and got on with what must be a sorry and empty little life. I suspect that it will take a few, likely quite a few, more rude awakenings like this before he really starts to clue into his surroundings and join the whole force of life that surrounds and inhabits us. Maybe in another thirty or forty years, when he's my age?
In the meantime, just when he got off the bus, two very scary looking street aboriginals got on. One cracked open a beer. I generally get on well with indigenous people, but these guys looked and felt truly frightening. Likely white-haters and probably for good reason. I did not much like being on the same bus with someone drinking alcohol at nine something in the morning and I did not feel like having to phone my client to cancel with him from hospital emergency. I discreetly approached the bus driver, who then went to them, and then shortly they got off the bus and, I suspect, boarded the one right behind us. When I got off the bus I looked over my shoulder at the bus behind me. To my relief it did not stop where I got off.
Feeling equal parts coward and hypocrite I walked on to my professional duties and even now still wonder what I should have done differently.
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