"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity."
-Albert Einstein
Mr. Cushing brought up an interesting point in class when we stepped back to examine aspects of our lives in regard to three different sociological lenses. Cars were brought up, which led to how we get from one place to another; I brought up the bus and the crowds, with a horrified shiver lilting my voice.
Mr. Cushing raised an auditory eyebrow at that, and began to talk about how the bus is a great equalizer of mankind. People who might never otherwise interact, who walk streets in opposition to one another, are all forced into limited space. The classlessness of the bus can cause great discomfort for those privileged who are now forced to share experience with the unprivileged.
I am on the bus and I am thinking about these things. I can smell the thick scent of spices and incense on the heavy face covering of an immigrant woman with three curly haired children; I listen to the sound of the man in front of me breathing. It seems unnaturally, outrageously loud to me. He is old, and possibly sick. From across the aisle, a kid in skinny jeans with too many piercings has his knobbly knees tucked up against the back of the seat in front of him, head turned to stare out the window so that I may see the back of his disheveled head and the patch-laden grungy backpack at his side.
Would I be more comfortable if, instead of the diversity here, I were surrounded by people of my age and ethnic groups? Probably not; I am prickly. I don't particularly like people my age, and while I am aware that the story of our culture has imbued me with a certain us/them mentality in regard to race, I don't feel like I have a problem with people of other races.
However, my detachment from my 'group' has more to do with poor socialization as a child than it does with any inherent saintliness and lack of race/age/sex/nationality-isms. Having thought on it, I have come to the conclusion that I wouldn't be comfortable surrounded by people on a bus unless they were people I already knew in some fashion. Even those who share common interests with me would still be perceived as threatening and unpleasant in my view until they became not strangers.
I believe that my discomfort on the bus is partially a story told by my own subculture, a sphere within the American individualistic hard working truck driving apple-pie culture: I am the nerd that gets picked on in school. I am the girl with the acne and tangled hair who never quite fit anywhere, the verbal punching bag for anyone who felt the need to let off steam by the systematic ritual of abuses suffered in early education. And though there have been many stories I have been a part of and am still a part of, that early narrative still runs strong.
I am still acting out this story, long after the days of its relevancy.
On the bus, every stranger is armed and unfriendly. Even the ones who smile.
Especially the ones who smile.
In fact, I feel less threatened by the woman who smells of incense and spices with her three curly-haired children. I make assumptions about her; she is speaking another language. She is an outcast, too. Her head is covered; is she Muslim? Her story runs counter to the norms of our shared society- I glance at her toes and note that the palms of her sandled feet are an unnatural shade of orange. Henna? I don't know. I will look it up later.
I try to make my glances covert. Maybe she sees me, though. Maybe she doesn't see me with the same warmth that I see her; can she see the story written in my posture, the way my arms cling to each other as if for safety, the way I can't meet her- or anyone's- eye? Probably not. I am just one more face in the crowd, one more pair of eyes with black eyeliner, just another stranger in a surely strange seeming land. Just another set of lips pulled tight in a surely disapproving line, making her feel all the more an outsider.
I try to stop looking. I know what it is like to be an outsider, though I'll never know to the depths of not understanding the scornful words directed my way... does she dream of a home country far away? Or was she raised here, and can, in fact, understand each scathing comment- but whispers in her native tongue to her children, imbuing in them the power of national identity?
I'll never know.
I pull the garrish yellow wire; a bell chimes. I swing my heavy backpack over my shoulder, and exit the bus.
I never see the woman again.
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