Overheard on the Bus

I was trying to read on the bus ride home last night. The key word here is trying.

A girl behind me was talking to her friend. Talking loud. Grrrr!

I tried to focus and ignore the blathering going on behind me. Again, the key word is tried.

However, snippets of what she said so loudly stabbed through my concentration like a bayonet.

“. . . look at this baby book that I just got. Isn’t it pretty? . . .”

“. . . I’m not getting an abortion no matter what he says . . . ”

“. . . I asked him if he was happy. He said that he had been happier . . . ”

“. . . he’s forty-five . . . and I’m twenty-five . . . but I don’t care . . . ”

“. . . I like to get drunk on Saturday nights . . .” (Even now that you’re pregnant??)

“. . . they are trying to get me into therapy . . . ” (Good luck. You need it . . .)

“. . . . I don’t have a mother, father, brother, sister, grandma, grandpa, or aunts and uncles . . .”

I watched Miss I-Don’t-Wanna-Have-An-Abortion as she got off at the same bus stop that I did. Her face was plain. Her hair was pulled into one-inch long stubby piggy-tails — or at least some of her hair made it in the rubber bands. The rest sproinged out in a hundred different directions.

A man was waiting at the bus stop. He was as handsome as a rusty pipe with a five o’clock shadow. Wait, not quite that handsome. The girl flopped into his arms for a hug. So that was her knight in shining amour . . . (Did you get that play on words? Good. I didn’t want you to think that I had misspelled a word.)

As I walked to my car, I thought about the direction her life was going. Down. This man was probably having a mid-life crisis and his virility was stoked that a twenty-five year old girl found him attractive. She probably saw a father figure in him, someone who would love her and take care of her.

I wondered what their life would be like in fifteen years — if they stayed together. He would be a sixty-five-year old man with arthritic knees, a bald head, reflux, and erectile problems. And she would be a forty-five year old who was going through a mid-life crisis as she realized that she was still young and still had lots of life left in her and yet her man was old, old, old.

I felt sorry for her. Really sorry for her.

Instead of therapy, she ought to have life counseling instead. Or maybe both.