Saturday Morning Arrives on the Heels of Thoughtless Supposition

The air is bright and clear. A small breeze whisks at the face as the giant evergreens supply their telling old forest scent. I amble towards the bus stop, my feet hugging the road's edge. I try to maintain that balance between walking into traffic or falling down into a muddy drainage ditch. A woman walks about thirty meters ahead of me wearing a giant shoulder bag and a pair of high heels attempting to sustain the same equivocation. Her pace is slower than my own. I have no desire to catch up so I slow my stroll to match her speed.

I turn my attention elsewhere. My approach to the bus stop for instance. The stop nears, shaded by a cedar tree. The tree drapes its strangely formed leaves over like a shop's awning. I sit myself on the road guardrail. It's not terribly comfortable but it does the job of resting the bum. I notice graffiti scrawled in pubescent script on the galvanized steel extrusion. It's black as if it were made from a "Sharpie" or something similar. The vandal apparently possessed a fixation on penises ejaculating. I discern more of the same written on the bus marker and the metal post that supports it.

With a sigh I again turn my attention elsewhere. The bus is going to come soon. I check my bus "app" on the phone. According to the "app" it'll be here in seven minutes. I start writing this here meaningless account of nothing important when the sound of the bus jolts me to standing at attention. With a smirk the driver eases the coach to a stop and hisses the door open. I wave my ORCA card (One Regional Card for All) in front of the reader. The reader beeps its acceptance and I move on into the bus. Everyone glances at my passing but quickly avert their gazes at my returning them. A blue-capped fat old man wearing a gray muscle shirt, a hipster attired it hip specs and hip Tshirt sporting hip sideburns, and a Costco employee in uniform are some to name a few. I often violate the "no eye contact" rule out of shear spite. I don't know why. Maybe it makes life more interesting. Perhaps I search those eyes for some semblance of a soul that I might have known in a previous life. It could be that I could debunk this antisocial trend we have here in the World of Big City USA, but I doubt it. If there is anything I am not it is a trendsetter. If you saw me on the street you'd take absolutely no notice. If you think I'm joking or exaggerating let me just say I have many years of backing data. I have observations ranging from the sickening emotional to the coldly scientific. You'll see (or not as the case in fact is). One glance at me and you might as well peer at a tree, or a pebble on the side of the road, or even a glade of grass in a middle of an abandoned lot.

The driver uses a stick to reach up to the display control to change the route information. The route changes numbers from the 331 to the 345. How do I know this? Why the "app" of course. The "app" has been telling me a lot of things lately. I  haven't gotten around to trusting it completely yet. I hope one day that time will come. Until then I shall remain apprehensive. However I can't seem to shake my skeptic philosophy, no matter how convincing the counter argument may be. So forget it. My apprehension will remain firmly in place.