The Character

Rare Forest Rabbit

“A smile is quite a funny thing,
It wrinkles up your face,
And when it’s gone, you never find
Its secret hiding place.”
          Author unknown
​

I was recently on a public bus. It wasn’t a big city bus and it was crowded. I am not very often on a public bus, so I was intrigued by the passengers. Many of them were staring at their little virtual rectangles. I think there are people who barely know what the real world looks like.

The bus had seats that faced the side of the bus and seats that faced the front. I was sitting on a side seat. Directly in front of me was a blonde woman who was looking at her phone. A man with a massive belly sat behind her. He wasn’t looking at a phone. He was staring at the woman’s head for much of the time. A young man sat facing the opposite side of the bus that we were facing. He was looking at his phone. A man sat beside me. He had a walker. He wasn’t staring at a phone.

My friend, who sat on other side of me, and wasn’t staring at a phone, said that some of these folks spend the day riding around and around. They get off, buy a coffee or use a washroom and then go for another spin. 

Middle River

One couple always sat apart. They would bring their lunches. The husband would eat his at the front of the bus. The wife would eat her lunch, while sitting on the wide seat, at the back of the bus. 

​I thought to myself, what a bunch of interesting characters. 

​I turned to my friend and said, “These characters would make an interesting CBC or BBC show.” My friend smiled and agreed.

​However, it wasn’t as if they were doing anything news-worthy. They just looked interesting. 

Near Middle River

I, meanwhile, was trying not to look interesting. 

​At the same time, I worried about not wearing a mask. The blonde woman kept coughing into her sleeve. I think her sleeve was drenched by the time she got off the bus.

Let Me Go

Anyway, as I hinted earlier, I tried to sit in a proper bus passenger way and not look like a character. 

​Suddenly, I found that I couldn’t move my feet. I wasn’t having a stroke or anything like that. No, my lace got attached to a hook on one of my boots. So, I had to do some subtle squirms and foot twists as I tried to disentangle my boots. 

Tree Near Sue's Memorial Place

You see, I have boots with metal hooks, and my lace got tangled around one of them. That’s why I couldn’t move my feet. I finally had to bend down and try to locate the source of the problem. 

Near Sue's Memorial Place

Really sounds not too difficult, doesn’t it? However, at my age, bending down isn’t so easy and my eyes aren’t so good at seeing clearly from my head to my feet. 

​People were beginning to take note.

Near Memorial

Near Memorial

“Damn it,” I whispered, as I tried to separate my two boots. I was coming very close to being called a bus character. 

​The man with the walker was now looking down at my boots. So was the man with the belly and the sleeve cougher. I was now hoping that many of the bus characters were firmly embedded in their virtual world and were too busy snacking on social media tidbits of almost important information, to pay any attention to me.

However, the small circle around me were looking, and so to give them some idea of just how dangerous a situation I was in, I said, “these boots can be dangerous. I know an elderly woman, who had the same kind of lace mechanism and her laces got tangled up and she fell on her face. She was badly injured.” I made the last part up, but it helped the bus people to understand just how much danger I was in.

I finally got the boots separated. By this time, we were getting close to our destination, and damn it all, but didn’t a lace, once again, get tangled up.

​“How close are we to our stop?” I asked my friend, as I grunted and bent. I wasn’t bothering to hide my actions now because it was, frankly, too late. I also realized that I was entertaining this crowd. This was what made their bus-ride addictions so worthwhile.

Our Morning Walk

The young man, who was facing the opposite wall, had taken note. To make it worse, the blonde woman, the big-bellied man and the fella beside me, plus who knows who else, had become not only fascinated by my black boots, but by my socks. I knew I shouldn’t have worn my pants that had shrunk in the wash. Follow directions

 “If we stop and you can’t get off, you can just stay on the bus until the next time the bus gets to our stop,” my friend joked.

​Part of the reason, I was struggling so, was because I was in a bit of a panic. I get clumsy when I’m in a dither. I’m not super mechanical anyway, and there’s a reason why two different bosses at two different factories suggested that I should look for alternative vocations. I actually almost destroyed a photo processing business.

Top of Blueberry Mountain

So, I pulled and twisted, as the man, sitting next to me, tried to get a better look. I think they were all about to give me advice or even a helping hand. However, the man, sitting next to me, had trouble moving to get a better look or to help, because I was sitting on his coat-tail.

I apologized and then said, so as to explain the whole reason for why I was being a character, “I’m from Cape Breton.”

​Anyway, I finally managed to get my boots separated just before our stop.
​

Yep, as I said, it was a bus full of characters. Guess who the main character was?