Let me set the scene.
You: A face in the crowd, just trying to get from some unknown point A to point B on an overcrowded rapid bus.
Me: A 6’2¾” person with bad balance, a heavy backpack and a very mild case of sleep deprivation.
How’d it all go so wrong?
We shared nought but a three-foot circle on this 8:50 a.m. R4 bus. We should have had no cause to exchange words or pay any particular notice to one another. We deserved nothing less than the joy of staring out of the bus window for 20 minutes, packed tighter than a can of sardines listening to our separate podcasts before going our separate ways.
But the world is cruel. Instead of what should have been we have this — a tragedy of happenstance and clumsiness.
First, it was an entirely predictable but all too severe swerve of the R4 to enter and exit a roundabout, and then it was me: leg kicking up to balance myself, arm swung involuntarily from the pole it had been too loosely clutching. I was the picture of a jive dancer having just witnessed a murder.
Oh how precarious it was! How nearly an ‘almost fell on you’ could have been a ‘fell on you’. How does one reconcile the impromptu and entirely undesired interaction we have both just shared.
If our position were reversed, what would you say? What would you do?
I simply attempted to regain my composure, gave my head a quarter-turn and said ‘sorry’, before retreating to my phone to pretend I had something to check. Did my voice crack too much while saying ‘sorry’? Did I play it off like it was no big deal? Or, to you and our fellow bus riders, did I look the fool I felt inside?
I shouldn’t ask questions I already know the answer to.
I glanced back at you, and you had already resumed your previous window-staring as if nothing had happened at all. What a noble act, pretending as though it hadn’t just thrown off your whole morning like it had mine. I wish I believed you, but I am not so naive.
As the R4 pulled into the bus loop and we went our separate ways, the experience continued to weigh on my consciousness for several entire minutes. Now that you have heard my side of the story, I say to you once more and with more assuredness than I could previously conjure:
I’m sorry I almost fell on you on the bus.