25 October 2001, 857 words
Story #1 - The 9:00 a.m. ECS bus from Chaguanas to Port of Spain isn't usually filled to capacity. But on one morning last week there was a small group of secondary school students heading into Port of Spain.
As schoolchildren always do, they piled up mostly at the back of the bus, where I was already sitting. So the two or three people at the tail-end of the line had to stand. One of them was a young woman dressed for work. The schoolchildren in the back row of seats murmured a bit. "If she want to stand, let she stand," one of them said sotto voce. "Miss, you want a seat?" another called.
The young woman smiled and shook her head: she didn't want to sit squashed in the middle of them. I got up and gave her my seat. It is my one gentlemanly habit and, besides, it enabled me to eavesdrop better on the youths' conversation.
At the San Juan stop, one person got off, and a boy who had been sharing a seat with another student slipped into the seat behind me. Again there was a mummer, and, after a moment, he touched me and asked me if I wanted to sit. I said no thanks; and thought, not for the first time, that adults who badtalk young people either know nothing about teenagers or - what I more believe - are just hypocritical about their own youthful days.
Story #2 - One day last week I joined the 4 p.m. bus line. A bus had just left so I was near the top, and to my right a middle-aged woman was quarrelling loudly with a small, sullen-looking boy who looked about 14 years old. "What you have with me? I ever bother you? No! But whether is here or Chaguanas, you always have something to tell me."
The boy didn't say anything, but one of his two friends, a taller boy, said, "Yes, miss, that is how he is." The woman said to him, "You see me come in the line? I tell he anything?"
"No miss," said the taller boy agreeably.
The other boy muttered something. "Boy, doh play with me today, you know!" the woman snapped. "Because I will slap you down and let the police lock me up."
He muttered again, and his friends said, "Hush up nah!"
The woman walked off and joined a group of women where she continued her tirade. The sullen boy started to say something loudly, but the taller boy interjected, "Woman, hush up nah, woman!"
I looked around, but there were apparently no feminists in the line to politically correct him.
Story #3 - That same evening, by the time the 4:30 bus arrived, the Chaguanas line, as always, snaked back some considerable distance. Ahead of me, there was a handful of people who had apparently planned to break the line. But a PTSC official had come, and they had stepped back: except for one tall Black Muslim and his wife. The official, a man of medium height in late middle-age, was asking the Black Muslim man to join the line. The Black Muslim was ignoring him, but still unable to get in because the people in the line, grumbling, were deliberately crowding in to stop him.
Nonetheless, when I saw he was going to push past the women in the line, I broke the line and went ahead and put my shoulder in front him and told him there was a line.
"But what happen to you?" he steupsed, and shoved past me and into the bus. The line stopped. His wife attempted to follow him, but my arm was still in the way. "Don't touch me, please," she said. "Sorry," I said.
The driver was refusing to take the Black Muslim man's ticket. "He wasn't in the line, drive," I said.
"I was in the line," the man told the driver.
"Which line?" asked the driver.
"He wasn in no line. Ask anybody here," I said. The Black Muslim continued to argue. "Just call security," I told the driver.
"This man, always trouble," his wife murmured.
The Black Muslim came back out. "What happen to you shoving me," he said.
"You suppose to join the line," I answered.
"You shoving me? You mad or what?"
I folded my arms, because that's the best way to be ready to block a blow without looking like you're ready to block a blow, and looked at him.
"All-yuh better watch all-yuh self," he said, warningly.
That made me grin. "Right. September eleventh," I said, getting on the bus.
Only later did it occur to me that, given the race of the PTSC official, the driver and myself, the "all-yuh" mightn't have meant everyone who wasn't a Muslim.
Story # 4: On the ECS bus, the people at the end of the line exiting the bus invariably thank the driver. This does not happen on maxis, taxis or the blue buses. Neither do the people who travel by those vehicles ever line up.
Copyright ©2002 Kevin Baldeosingh