Courtesy's sadly taken a back seat
IT WAS becoming a matter of concern. Bus travel was no longer the ordeal that it once seemed.
Which caused me to worry that I’d simply become accustomed to the daily miseries of queue jumping, loud music, swearing, malodorous food and seat-hogging.
I fretted that my standards had slipped and soon I’d join the anti-social throng – listening to rap, eating onion-covered hot dogs, cussing loudly down my mobile phone whilst sprawled over two seats and threatening any bus driver with the temerity to point out that I didn’t have a valid ticket.
But my faith in the baseness of humanity was restored in a brief journey from the city centre one recent evening rush-hour.
Enter one young mother with a pushchair roughly the size of a small car which, through the mumbling crowd, she clumsily navigated into a slot allocated to buggies.
What happened next is unclear, but I’d guess she collided with the legs of an elderly woman – her face as gloomy as the average British seaside resort in February – who was sitting alongside the space.
The pensioner reacted by pushing away the buggy.
Mistake.
For then the young mother began a rant, asking all and sundry whether the woman was insane.
Any sympathy her hapless enemy might have won disappeared when she made an offensive racist remark to the young mother, who upped the ante with a string of particularly offensive comments.
Eyes were diverted as the spat rumbled on and I was only too pleased to surrender my ringside seat to a woman who hobbled with a walking stick down the aisle.
To my credit – because it was right to give up a seat to someone who is infirm. To my discredit – because it was an easy way to get away from the bickerers.
But I watched bemused as the woman turned and chatted to the man who’d taken the seat opposite and, it emerged, was her son.
Let’s reflect: two people arguing when a little courtesy might have avoided any confrontation.
Let’s reflect: I gave my seat to a woman whose son did not see fit to show the same politeness.
Anyone detect a pattern?
Without wishing to sink into “when I was a young lad mode”, when I was a young lad good manners were the norm.
As a boy I was taught to offer my bus or train seat to any adult. People generally didn’t indulge in loud arguments in public. Swearing was frowned on.
Now doors are routinely left to slam in faces, the words “please” and “thank you” are viewed as quaint and, at best, we show little regard for people around us, but more often downright contempt.
And when such attitudes prevail, ill-tempered confrontation is inevitable.
How much better this city would be were its inhabitants to embrace the courtesies that were commonplace a generation or two ago.
So here comes the fightback...
Thank you, (some) fellow bus passengers, for reinforcing my view that we humans really are an unpleasant bunch. Much appreciated.
