Wednesday, July 14
The Commuter Guy
He is the boyfriend of my mate's sister and I tend to see him on the bus quite a bit as I work similar hours to him. The thing is, I don't really know him and were it not for the fact that we both favour the transportation services of the Travel West Midlands Bus Services number 51 and 16, I would have no reason to ever speak to him.
However, fate has conspired to throw us together and we share long traffic filled journeys. We talk about our respective jobs ( He works in a bank), about traffic, weather, sheds, the proposed new metro system, about my mate who we both know.
As you can imagine, conversation tends to dry up quite quickly as we generally have nothing in common whatsoever. However it is common courtesy that if one of us gets on the bus and the other one is sitting there with a free seat, we have to sit next to each other.
Once, instead of taking the vacant seat, I said a cursory hello before scampering to the back of the bus to listen to my MP3 Player. I felt terrible about this for days and the next time I saw The Commuter Guy I went and sat straight down next to him and immediately began to discuss the weather. I didn't apologise for the previous snub, but he knew I was sorry - I could tell by the way he fervently complained about the Birmingham Metro extension that he was glad I was back.
Now I'm sure he is a lovely guy and I expect he thinks the same about me, but I expect that he'd prefer just to sit and read the Metro News, just I would prefer to listen to my new electronics CD's and doze off - so why are we compelled to sit next to each other and make strained small talk?
He is the boyfriend of my mate's sister and I tend to see him on the bus quite a bit as I work similar hours to him. The thing is, I don't really know him and were it not for the fact that we both favour the transportation services of the Travel West Midlands Bus Services number 51 and 16, I would have no reason to ever speak to him.
However, fate has conspired to throw us together and we share long traffic filled journeys. We talk about our respective jobs ( He works in a bank), about traffic, weather, sheds, the proposed new metro system, about my mate who we both know.
As you can imagine, conversation tends to dry up quite quickly as we generally have nothing in common whatsoever. However it is common courtesy that if one of us gets on the bus and the other one is sitting there with a free seat, we have to sit next to each other.
Once, instead of taking the vacant seat, I said a cursory hello before scampering to the back of the bus to listen to my MP3 Player. I felt terrible about this for days and the next time I saw The Commuter Guy I went and sat straight down next to him and immediately began to discuss the weather. I didn't apologise for the previous snub, but he knew I was sorry - I could tell by the way he fervently complained about the Birmingham Metro extension that he was glad I was back.
Now I'm sure he is a lovely guy and I expect he thinks the same about me, but I expect that he'd prefer just to sit and read the Metro News, just I would prefer to listen to my new electronics CD's and doze off - so why are we compelled to sit next to each other and make strained small talk?
