The other day I was riding the bus to work at 6:30am. As we were going down the street, we slowed down to let a pedestrian cross. The walker a man who must have been at least in his 50's, with white hair, slowly sauntered across the street. But not directly across, he started walking diagonally across.
The driver must have been in a hurry because he didn't come to a complete stop, but rolled slowly forward.
This must have angered the walker because he turned to face the bus, in the middle of the street and stopped to shout curses at the bus driver. Not literal curses, but random angry yells and profanities.
The driver responded by avancing slowly towards the man. Eventually the guy got out of the way. Unfortunately for everyone on the bus and especially the driver the next stop was right there and there were people waiting to get on.
The jerky pedestrian pushed his way to the front of the line and got onto the bus, angrily asking for the driver's id number to be reported to the transit authority. For what I don't really understand even though threatening a stranger's livelyhood is a great way to start the day or the week for that matter.
The driver pointed to his id card posted near the roof and said, "You should cross at the corner and go strait across. You were going diagonally and jay walking."
The walker responded, "I'm reporting you to your superiors you pushed me off the cross walk".
Normally a very calm patient person, this morning I was neither. I shouted, in my angry voice, none the less, "We all saw what happened, you were jay walking! Get off the bus and let us go to work!"
Now often in calmer environments people here in Australia can often tell that I'm Canadian about 75% of the time. I could tell by the pedestrian's reaction and the look on his face that I had caught him off guard and that he thought there was a good chance that his ace was about to be kicked by a psycho Yankee. He didn't say another work and retreated to the relative safety of the street.
-Gary Milner
ps. Don't abuse random people, that you have never met before, without a good reason.
1 comment:
Good for you.
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