Bus Chicken
Every weekday, having finished work, I catch the bus home. Two stops after I have boarded, an ear-ringed man gets on. He and I travel on the same bus home, every day. Nothing remarkable so far I suppose you’re saying. How about if I tell you we get off at the same stop? Does that make it more interesting? No? Wait, there’s more!
Today, I realised that he may have noticed that I’m always on the same bus as him. I’ve known for quite a while, and I have always let him press the “stop’ button on my behalf as we approach our stop. It’s become so routine for me that I know almost exactly when he’s going to press the button. Today though, he missed his cue. The point in the journey passed and he hadn’t moved. Almost immediately, I figured out that he had realised that I was on the bus and that I was going to be alighting at the next stop. I figured that he was thinking, “that cool-looking character at the back of the bus, where I wish I was cool enough to sit, is getting off at the next stop. I’ll wait for him to press the button.” Well, he could forget that! I’ve been going weeks having not pushed that button, and I’d be damned if I was going to start now. “Game on,” I thought.
So we both sat, me confidently, him wishing he hadn’t challenged me to this game of chicken. The bus approached the last corner before the stop. We were now only less than 20 metres away and no one had hit “stop”. As the bus began to break to turn, he bottled it and hit the button. I leapt from my seat to get in front of him. He’s a slow walker. The bus turned the corner and came to a halt. I’d won this round.
