Chronicles of a Procrastinating Novelist Volume 30: Princess Inconsiderate

To the kid on the bus who busts her moves and sings along to whatever music blasts behind the headphones in her ears:

I hate you.

I don't hate you because your music's not my taste, though thanks to your uninhibited warbles, I'm in no doubt as to the genre and lyrics of each and every selection. 

I don't hate you because you're young and seemingly carefree. Although you lounge across the seats with a posture uninhibited by arthritis or chronic aches, and your expressions bespeak happiness, there's no reason you might not possess woes of which I'm ignorant. We only spend 31-47 minutes in one another's company weekly. I'm exposed to exactly one facet of your personality from which I draw my loathing. 

I don't hate you because you appear defiantly determined to stand out. Each Tuesday, the designs skillfully penned upon your face in eyeliner alter and transform into fresh intricate shapes and patterns (I also know it’s eyeliner because yesterday you told the inquisitive flirt in baggy pants who asked if they were tattoos, "It's eyeliner, Bra."). You're talented. You can draw. I noticed. Mission accomplished. That's fine. Be you. 

I hate you because you're inconsiderate.

You sit with your feet stretched across two seats or dangling over a railing, and you don't move them for new riders, old people, or anyone who needs to move past. 

Your bopping to the music and dancing in your seat, leaks into the view and personal space of others, even those who studiously try to ignore you (yes, it takes effort). If seated behind or in front of you, our seats bounce to your rhythm, as if the bus's shocks weren't insult enough to the derrière. God forbid we read, or your gestures invade our periphery and distract us. It's annoying.

I should chill out.

I should ignore you.

I should focus on the positive, like the fact I'm on the bus headed home.

I should let you be yourself and cast the mote out of my own eye.

But your attitude is like a cheese grater on my last nerve. My ire renders me myopic, and so I imagine but two explanations for your behavior. Either, you're oblivious to how obnoxious you are, or you don't care that you are because you think your wants are more important than those of others.

In a wider sphere, say, the world's stage, I wouldn't care. Hell, I'd applaud your confidence, or write your obliviousness off as youthful, ignorant indulgence. But in a tiny, metal rectangle, after twelve hours of listening to ICU nurses complain and gossip, after watching patients behavior wield and lie to get their way, after being condescended to by med-surg nurses annoyed that I'm not a secretary so don't know where their paperwork is, I've had it with disrespectful behavior, and you, my girl, have become the embodiment of disregard for one's fellow human beings.

So, as I exit the bus, it requires every last ounce of restraint I can gather from the frayed scrap pile that remains of my nerves not to lean down, pop an earbud out of your ear and whisper, "You're an inconsiderate little shit.”

Thank you for reading,

B