The Bus Stop

The Bus Stop ©

By

Michael Casey

A bus stop is an ordinary even boring kind of thing, but if you look closely you’ll see the whole world in front of you. My brother gave up using buses when he was 40 something, he was fed up of being wet in the rain, waiting for a bus to come.

I still use buses so I see the whole world and their mother. At the bus stop you still see young mothers, some too young to be mothers, smoking all over the child in the pram. I’ve noticed too that Polish people seem to smoke more, mind you my brother still smokes. One of our lodgers smoked and drank and gambled and he died at 83, the day after his birthday.

At the bus stop you have the clock watcher, somebody who is forever glancing at his watch, eager to get to work, as if he is the CEO. Nowadays some people don’t have watches, they have mobiles, so why have a watch.

The music fan is also to be found at the bus stop, his music blasting from his mp4 player. I’m standing 5 feet away and I can hear the music loud and clear. So is the music fan melting his brain, or is he just DEAF.

The kindle reader is a new thing, but there at the bus stop you can see the reader reading the reader, I’m watching the reader reading his reader. So it goes on, I’m the David Attenborough of the bus stop, watching and observing everything.

There is the new couple, still clinging and groping one another at the bus stop, and it only 8am. She clings to him as he with his gap tooth smile tries to bite her neck again, like some daytime Dracula. To be honest you feel sick, you want to throw a bucket of water over them, they are maybe 19 to 21, they have discovered sex. So they are still sampling one another at the bus stop.

A regular, a little old lady and her Scottie dog walks past, the dog stops to pee at the corner of the shelter, splashing the lovers, there was no bucket of water to hand but the Scottie dog should be applauded.

The bus slows and stops, the lovers exchange a final French kiss, more like a tonsillectomy, but he has to go back to bed while she has to go to work. Luv You they say 15 times over as the queue fills the bus.

An ordinary day at an ordinary bus stop, somewhere in Birmingham. I wonder is it the same where you are?