Drama on the Bus

The bus ride. The brief space in one's day where one is assured of comfy mundanity. It feels like a commuter's god-given right, that stretch of blankness inside that mobile, pocket-sized and fluid community. A bus is a place where as soon as you sit down, you assume the mental faculties of that grimy, hideously upholstered bus seat. You become one; you and the bus-seat. A joining of arse and fabric, welded together until the fatal departure, the ominous 'DING!' a falsely cheery funeral knell. It malevolently mocks that wrenching apart of a newly created organism. *DING!*
And then SNAP, your consciousness rushes in you like a poltergeist possession, and you're let loose once again into the stream of daily existence.

How many bus rides have i had over this year? How many bus rides will i have over the rest of my life? How many hours spent in such peachy vacuousness?
Well, i've had a few to date anyway. All non-descript, as you expect.

Until yesterday.

The bus was trundling down the street down the same predictable route. I was in my happy place. My fellow commuters were presumably in theirs. Then, at the corner of my eye, i saw a white flash. THe bus screeched to a halt, flinging an old biddy at the front right out of her seat. The white thing on my periphery had been a car reversing like a rocket out of a driveway across the road. I looked over the edge of the bus out the window. There was a hairs breadth between the two vehicles. After a stunned pause, the white vehicle drove away from the scene. Inside the bus, there was a stunned pause. THen two passengers leaped off their seats and rushed over to the dumped granny, who was lying on the floor, stupefied. One of the helpers took complete control of the situation, whipping out orders right and left as though she had been a sergeant in her former life. The rest of us might have been statues, staring tensely at the traumatised lady. Throughout the whole of it, the busdriver sat in his cabin. I wondered briefly whether the government had us fooled, and that they were trying to cut expenses by replacing human drivers with automatons.

I'm not too sure, but i think i overhead a mutter that the woman had broken her arm. A nosebleed at least. Poor old biddy! Luckily, we werent' far from Charles Gardner Hospital. For whatever reason, the bus didn't take her there direclty, and an ambulance was called. The passengers were directed to file off from the crisis scene and we migrated over the adjacent oval to the nearest bus stop.

For sure, poor old biddy! But the episode was- who could deny it?- exciting! Should i be whipped for finding it so?