A Strange Day...

I watched in helpless desperation as the bus drove past my stop, a whimpered “no” escaped my lips, the bus, totally empty trundled on. About half a minute later, not only am I much closer to my stop but a second bus can be seen in the distance heading straight for me. Not only is the fact that two buses appearing within such close proximity to each other a miracle in it’s purest form but what happened next was a rarity indeed. I ran. That’s right. I ran. For the bus. I got there an instant before the bus giving me just enough time to straighten my hijaab and generally compose myself, all the while acting as if running was a regular occurrence in my life.

Whilst sitting on the bus I noticed a young woman near the front observing me, I glanced at her and she looked away. This intricate display of social norms was repeated several times, the girl shifted positions and moved her arm, where I saw a silver glint, I looked closer and then it hit me, the girl wasn’t sat on a seat in the bus...she was in a wheelchair. This affected me in quite an unexpected way, I had just ran for the bus without giving a second thought to the very act of placing one leg in front of another and here was a woman who probably had to put great effort and thought into it. The bus stopped, a few people got on, I saw the girl glance at them and share a secret smile with a hidden face, on seeing the now unhidden face I immediately saw a resemblance between the two women. Sisters. Indeed, the smile that was exchanged was the sort given by one sister to another, that knowing smile that they know something that the rest of the world is oblivious to. My attention turned to the sister and I noticed she had a sling around her arm, again my reaction was quite profound. I had almost unconsciously used both hands in a balancing act involving my umbrella, my bag, my purse and the money when paying the bus driver. I was uncomfortable to say the least, uneasy at the fact that I take both my arms and legs and in fact every other functioning aspect of my body for advantage, and use them constantly without giving one iota of thought to the millions of actions they allow me to perform every day. Whilst looking out of the rain splattered window I silently appreciated all that I had.

That would have made as good ending to the post but the surreal-ness of the day didn’t stop there, my destination was a primary school where I was covering for one of the after school club staff. As the session was drawing to a close and each child was getting picked up by parents from various sectors of the work force two events occurred which added to the bizarreness of the day. On finding out that his son had hit another pupil a father had responded in the very way his son had learned, he threatened “to batter” his son up once he got home. Another father picking up his daughter this time had noticed that his eight year old daughter had been using her mum’s fake tan. Again. As I stood there putting the pack of cards away that the girl in question and me had been using to play snap, I couldn’t help but wonder what a peculiar world we live in…