Nic Narrates

Emily Dickinson once wrote that “hope is the thing with feathers,” and I’ve long remembered and loved that (despite not loving much else of her writing).

The memory of this came to me on the bus to the train to the walk to work this morning, i.e. my daily commute (seriously kickass, right?). One of the buses I sometimes take fills with disrespectfully screaming, swearing, texting teenagers on their way to high school. Over time, I’ve discovered that sitting in the front of the bus is far desirable to the back, where all sorts of loud shenanigans are afoot.

Despite this realization, morning bus rides have included overhearing about their latest forays into smoking pot instead of snorting coke (JUST SAY NO!!!!!!!, I screamed at her in my head), listening to a girl perched on another’s lap- which might as well have been a soapbox- spew how she thinks it very important to never call a guy multiple times in a single day (so THAT’S what I’m doing wrong), and a boy who sang about going down on a girl (was that seriously a real song or did he make up those blush inducing, make-me-feel-like-an-eighty-year-old-prude lyrics?). Let me just assert, it’s a lot to take in pre-coffee and before 8 a.m.

Growing up, I never took a school bus to or from school. My parents drove us or we walked or carpooled. So the realization that essentially I’m riding a school bus at 27 as part of my daily commute, and my encounters with America’s youth there upon, has proven incredibly disheartening.

But this morning, as I sat reading Paris to the Moon with students claustrophobicly crowded in all around me, the boy sitting next to me quietly reading The Jungle offered his seat to a woman in her fifties who had just boarded. Though she declined, she and I shared a smile of recognition at this incredibly rare kindness.

While everyone hears the same announcements to give up your seat to “the elderly, people with disabilities, or expectant mothers,” in three years in the city and countless hours on the CTA, I’ve actually only witnessed it thrice.

Dickinson may have written of hope from the windowsill where she sat ever secluded, but this morning I witnessed hope take flight and sing in the teenage boy who sat beside me.

Filed under: a thing of beauty, city encounters, everyone should read more, in transit, people should be nicer to each other, public transportation, whimsy by Nic