Theory

I have a theory – only students (and teachers, I guess), old people, and disabled people catch the bus at 8 AM in the suburbs.

OK, so maybe this isn’t always true, but on my bus in the morning, there are definitely a few people who I always notice, and they mostly fit with the theory.

First of all, there’s super-cute private school boy. Student.

Super-cute private school boy (let’s shorten that to SPSB, shall we?) has floppy, STRAIGHT brown hair that normally covers his eyes and makes you want to attack him with a pair of scissors. He goes to the local catholic school and is normally listening to music on the bus. Sometimes a pretty, bleached-blonde girl from the private school just down the road from his school sits next to him and they chat. I know he takes photography because I heard them talking about his excursion once. I’m pretty sure he’s in year 11, but I have no idea what his name is and I know that no matter how often I glance at him I never catch him glancing at me. He wears white socks pulled up to his knees and folded over at the top. He’s very skinny, and by far the most notable person on the bus.

Are you alarmed yet? I’m an avid people-watcher. I can’t help it! I just notice things.

I notice things just like I’ve noticed texta-wielding Down’s syndrome guy from across the road. He falls into the disabled category.

I’ve been seeing TWDSG for a few years now. One morning he was mock-shooting me with a gun he made out of textas, hence the “texta-wielding ” section of his title. He’s somewhere in his twenties, I think, and it seems to me that he likes everything that screams BOY. He loves football jerseys and red polo shirts. He has big, thick glasses and he listens to his music with big, fat over-ear cans instead of in-ear headphones. He seems pretty sweet (although troublesome) and he likes chatting to himself and licking his lips a lot. He has a very large tongue. I wonder where he goes in the morning, because I get off the bus before him. Sometimes I think he heads down to the local butchers, where they often have a couple of guys with Down’s syndrome sitting on a bench just inside the shop helping to open the door for customers.

Moving on to sweet little old lady, who fits into the category of – you guessed it – old people.

SLOL doesn’t catch the bus as often as SPSB and TSDSG, so I don’t have a big picture mapped out for her. All I really know about her is that she likes to wear granny floral dresses, normally in blue, and she very willingly puts up with the slightly odd, overly chatty mum who also sometimes rides the bus. They have long, one-sided conversations about nothing in particular and SLOL just sits there and nods her smiley little white head. Normally when people get on the bus the drivers don’t wait for them to sit down, they just shut the door and drive off quickly, because they’re worried about being late (I don’t know why they worry, they’re normally 10-20 minutes late in the first place). But when dear old SLOL hops on they wait very patiently for her to get her rickety old body to a seat and lower herself in. They’re obviously more worried about lawsuits than they are about being late.

When I started catching the bus at the beginning of high school, I remember that SPSB made me self-conscious and uncomfortable, TSDSG scared me a little, and SLOL made me worried for her. Now though, I recognise them as fellow bus members. We will never do more than watch each other, but I almost feel as though we’re part of a little family. It’s weird, huh? I find people-watching very lucrative, and even though I’ll forget these three in the future, at least they provide me with early-morning entertainment and at least they hold a place in my heart and mind now.

And it’s like they say – better to have watched and lost than never to have watched at all!

Tags: bus, disabled people, Down's syndrome, family, old people, people-watching, students, super-cute private school boy, sweet little old lady, texta, texta-wielding Down's syndrome guy, theory