But more awful than all of that, more awful than the obvious smell of human feces, the constant threat of an STI and the ever growing pool of slobber on the floor, was the mum who came on with her child.
Children are small people. They're like normal people only their brains haven't developed properly yet and their arms and legs are shorter. Another way they differ is that they get excited by public transport whereas the rest of us wish it would die in a horrible, tragic fire that I accidentally started on purpose. The kid I met today was loving it. It was like the bus was rotting flesh and he was a fly, in the sense that he was all over it. (See what I did there? You don't get a Masters in writing for nothing.) He was running up and down the aisle and bouncing quite merrily on his seat, not really bothering anyone because they all knew they were vastly more terrible people and had no right to complain. Even me, a person who spends his days being bothered by more or less everything, didn't mind that this mini-human was having a nice time.
The only person who did mind was his mum.
Having shouted at him for the whole 40 minute ride and telling him repeatedly that if he didn't 'shut the f*ck up' she would smack him in the face they finally got off just before I did. At least she got off, he was dragged off because that's obviously how to be a good parent.
I think she thought that she was teaching him good discipline and making him behave, but what she was actually doing was teaching him to hate women and think that violence is a good way to solve things.
One day that mum will die. It will look like an accident but then, years later, when they've found twenty other bodies that have all died in similar circumstances, they'll figure out that it wasn't an accident after all.
Is that the kids fault? Nah, it's his bitch of a mums. She likely deserved it.
| The future |
(Disclaimer: Killing is wrong. Don't do it. I'm talking to you.)