Redemption's Song and other short stories

The Wheels on the Bus

"The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round..."

A small child and her mother had wandered past him singing the old rhyme as he'd stood at the bus stop, and the simple tune had now managed to seep into his brain before he'd managed to get his headphones on. Unfortunately, it had stuck, and a few minutes later, the tune was endlessly repeating in his brain, and he sat in abject misery on the bus.

Bob had taken to listening to music on the bus at all times, in order to avoid having to talk to any of the sociopathic nonentities that seemed to inhabit public transport. But today, the tunes on his MP3 player had failed to take over from the small child's singing. Normally, he read his book too to completely block out his surroundings but that morning he had forgotten it due to searching for his umbrella to combat an unexpected shower. Lots of damp people had got onto the bus, steaming up the windows, so unless everybody stopped breathing, all that was left was the age-old pastime of people watching instead.

Maybe it was some sort of evolutionary step he mused, looking at his fellow passengers. Maybe Darwinian evolution would produce a sub-species of human that could only survive in the confines of the diesel fumed, chewing gum infested mobile shed the local bus company laughingly called public transport: a new species of human able to exist only for short periods of time outside their natural environment of "bus" to forage for fast food and top-ups for their mobile phones. On closer inspection, there even appeared to be sub-categories of numpty-man or Homo Moronicus as he'd come to think of the new sub-species.

For something to do, he began to mentally compile a list of the various Moronicon stereotypes. His gaze alighted on a lady near the front of the bus. A prime example of the "mad old bat": generally female, usually smelling faintly of urine, cats or lavender and indeed sometimes all three! Not always old, but usually an indiscriminate fifty-ish woman with a large handbag of tardis-like qualities, who talked incessantly about the "state of the world today", "how teenagers assaulted people for pleasure", "the fact the council weren't collecting bins often enough", or anything else they could have a damn good moan about, and often including various medical problems they might be experiencing, in excruciatingly nauseating detail.

Looking around for his next stereotype, his eyes came to rest on a teenage boy who was standing by the door, waiting to get off at the next stop. Tall, gangly, spotty, pants on view from the rear of his trousers that seemed to have a crotch somewhere down by his knees; "skate kid" was usually harmless unless his trousers fell down, but insisted on wearing massive headphones around his neck instead of clamped to his ears, thus enabling the whole bus to faintly hear the "guck tsh, guck tsh, guck tsh" of the rhythm.

Thankfully his own noise-cancelling headphones were still working, throwing out a soothing counterpoint to the interminable drivel being spouted by a "twenty-something moron" behind him. Unlike "skate kid" who could also be female and quite frankly not a problem, "twenty-something moron" was always male, always an ignorant arse, and nearly always seemed to be sitting just behind him. Dressed in a variety of clothes from a smart (I'm in my first real job) suit, to cheap and nasty (I don't give a shit) sports gear, the only real prerequisite was to talk overly loudly on your phone, play with said phone incessantly, or put some heavy beats on loudspeaker so even those people blessed with inner ear 'phones couldn't tune it out: the only exceptions (sometimes) being the invariably smelly and oblvious "alcho-guy" or anyone with a hearing aid, so they could turn it off and remain in blissful silence.

Bob wiped half-heartedly at the window next to him, smearing a greasy film of something across the glass. Hmm, how we gettin' on: only half-way to work. He resumed his musings.

Now where were we? Ah yes "mad old bat", "skate kid", "twenty-something moron", "Alcho-guy".

He tried a more positive tack on his thoughts. There were some good people on the bus sometimes too of course, the sweeping generalisation he seemed to be mentally indulging in included: