Another bus story,

Already incredibly tired and frustrated from today, on the bus ride home a woman and Little Boy get on the bus at some point between work and home. Little Boy simply cannot help swinging from the (utterly useless) hand-holds suspended above, blocking other passengers as they attempt ingress or egress. Woman seems a little too old to be Little Boy’s mother, Little Boy appearing to be around 8 or so.

As about 10 stops from my destination, Little Boy decides it is fun to swing from the bar, while reaching up behind and toggling the Request-Stop button on the vertical bar next to him, avoiding the gaze of his .. keeper. After a few stops where no one gets off, the bus driver gets a little irritated and punishes all by waiting, a very long time, at the 3rd last stop of my trip. Then he gets going again, and stupid Little Boy does it again… finally the bus driver just sits at the stop, now only one stop away from mine. Another bus comes up along side and stops, and almost everyone on the bus gets out and onto it. I walk up and ask what’s going on, the driver says he won’t move because of the people messing around with the signal. So I tell him Little Boy did it.

The *mother just says “I didn’t see it, so it wasn’t him”… I really wanted to say “Well, that just means you’re negligent”, but I decided to demonstrate how Little Boy did it, saying how I saw it several times from the perfect vantage point I had at the back, also telling him that swinging around wasn’t a very good way to stay inconspicuous, he should stay still while pressing the button. By now the bus was already moving again, with I think only me and Little Boy and *mother on it. Then I say “But now I’m pressing the button” and the bus driver confirms that this is my stop. I leave, annoyed.

I don’t enjoy telling off other people, or their kids, especially on what I will laughingly call Toronto’s Transit system, but today, ugh.