By Margo Lawson
A travel-sized pillow, sporting a tear along the end seam that shows its white and fluffy insides, a pack of old cough drops, cherry flavored and oddly pungent, a twenty dollar note, and an opened bag of candies. Those possessions are all I carry with me currently as I take my seat, and each one I keep possessively tucked away close to me.
The bus I am on jerks to the side, swerving to avoid what I can only assume is a fallen oak tree or several piles of roadkill. Never have I been on a more rowdy and frankly obnoxious bus ride in my life. The bus that churns indifferently underneath my seat continuously leans to the left, leaving me no choice but to tip right to counteract this unsettling motion.
On the row across from me, a child sits on his mother's lap. The bright red color of his stick-straight hair almost matches the somehow more blinding shade of vermillion that covers his chubby face and is currently spreading down his neck as he screams his tiny head off. Such a small thing can make such noise, and such noise can cause quite a headache.
The child is being quite dramatic anyway since the beginning of his screaming began when his mother wouldn’t let him eat a bug off the seat of the bus. I don’t think he would’ve enjoyed the bug much anyway, not a very pleasant nor enjoyable mealAlthough I am beginning to wish the mother simply allowed him to eat it. Hoping to cut the screaming I give the boy the rest of my candy, praying that it might stop the horrendous noise and therefore my headache. Thankfully it quickly does, and the sound ceases. His mom tries thanking me while the boy digs in but I wave her off. I didn’t do it for her anyway, I did it for my headache.
I only get a few moments of peace, well as much peace as possible while on a fifty-seater deathtrap, before someone behind me cries out. Quickly it becomes apparent that the man behind me spilled a bottle of orange juice on the seat he sat on. I roll my eyes at his carelessness and settle down for the rest of the drive on the ripped, fake leather seat beneath me. Unfortunately for the stranger, there are no open seats on the bus, so unless he wishes to stand he must now deal with the sticky seat.
I choose to ignore the man asking the population of the bus if anyone has any towels to clean his mess, joining the group of people who mutter “no” and go about their business. That is until I hear it, the clingy, tacky sound of a sticky surface. Once I notice it I can’t get it out of my head, that every time the man moves I hear the obnoxious sound as he attempts to clean up the spill as best he can until I cannot bear it anymore. I turn around in a huff and give the man my travel pillow. I tell him shortly to keep it and to put it atop the seat to avoid touching it. He gives me thanks and I roll my eyes at him since just like last time I did it for my convenience and no one else’s.
The rest of the drive is perfectly uneventful. The bus flew up and over an office building at one point when we hit a pothole, but the good news is I am pretty sure we skipped a traffic light. I gave away my cough drops to the lady who seemed to be hacking up a lung, simply to ease my discomfort at the spreading of her germs in the stuffy air, and I gave away the twenty-dollar bill to someone who forgot to pack money for food. That last one I only did because I thought the person might cry, and crying makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
When I get to my stop I stand and brush off my pants. I stretch as I walk off, and for some reason many people on the bus wave to me cheerfully and tell me to have a good day as I leave. I find this odd given that no one seemed to do this for other people who exited at their stop, so I simply ignore them all as I leave, including the child with the stick-straight red hair.
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