Every Young Adult Should Have Life Alert 2

Later in the day, as I took the bus home from work having forgotten this touching moment and the rest of my Miralax-laden morning (Last "old people have diarrhea" joke I swear), the bus found its last stop, my stop, and people began to unload. It was an unusually packed bus, so I became somewhat jaded by the sight of all these people. I was perhaps 4 or 5 people behind when I noticed something a little strange in the corner of my left eye.

2 people were left before I realized that at least 6 or 7 people had walked right in front of a small elderly lady, who was at the very first seat of the bus on the left, when the exited. They streamed past her undeterred. The last person before me actually bumped into her right shoulder as she cowled, waiting for the gush of people to pass by.

If you want to understand what has driven the recent anger on this blog, this moment is the perfect microcosm.

Annoyed, I abruptly stopped, feeling the slight misstep of someone rushing behind me, and waited for this lady to make her move. She noticed the opening, and began a slow drift for the exit. She had particular difficulty getting off, easily taking her about 4 seconds to get down 3 steps.

Feeling impatience behind me, I grabbed both handles of the door in a gesture that could only be described as a roundabout "Fuck everyone on this bus". She was getting off first.

Amazingly though, she did this without making one sound. Completely hush, she exited the bus, and entered another. It was as though she didn't care. Not just for the river of dumbassery that blocked her on the bus, but even for my white-knight antics.

Yeah old people are slow. Yeah they're intolerant. And come on, it's just funny when they slap an emergency lever like it's a stop button.

But I do love that they're able to avoid giving a shit in a world that provides too much of it. That there is an incessant protest against the mainstream structure of society that is implicit in their quiet and meticulous actions.

This is something I wish I saw more of in my peers, whom I feel don't understand and don't utilize the control they have in their lives. Lives that have been dictated for 20 years by an unsubstantiated obligation to go to school, and what little television has to offer.

I'm not gonna suggest everyone uses the elderly as a model for their convictions, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to observe them a bit, and embrace the attitudes and experience they convey with every step.

I'm totally gonna be that old guy everyone hates. Fuck.