I was standing with three of my friends at the bus stop for
Bus 144—not a typical bus for us. It was just before 19:00 and we were running
very late. Being Americans, we didn’t know we were about to enter London Rush
Hour for the very first time.
As we waited for a bus, we were worried that we were at the
wrong stop, because there didn’t seem to be many buses passing by. But then
more and more people started standing with us, and we gathered that this
particular bus line wasn’t as fast as we were used to. Pretty soon there were
so many people huddling around the bus stop that we all had to press together
to avoid being pushed into the street.
Finally a bus came! But apparently all the bus etiquette we’d
learned went out the window at rush hour.
People surged forward and began squeezing in everywhere that they could
get. The bus driver looked ready to deal with this and started closing the door
before too many people could get on. Two more people were able to push their
way through the closing doors and get on.
We were left standing on the curb watching the bus pull away
and wondering what had just happened. The next bus took longer to come, and it
didn’t even stop. Someone near us explained that the buses don’t stop when the
bus driver decides it’s full. That’s a lot of power to give a bus driver, in my
opinion.
When the next bus came, we were ready to fight for our
spots. We squeezed onto the bus and then stood pressed against the driver’s
separating glass until enough people got off (over the next ten stops) that we
were able to find seats on the second level. We had lived through that chaos,
and we thought it would be the last time. We were very, very wrong.
This is a funny story. It reminds me of two things. First, the time i tried to exit an airplane before everyone else. I got some mean looks for that one. And my first week in my mission in Mexico. The roads were so crazy to me; there is much less driving law in Mexico. I told my mom once that the sounds on a Mexican street are comparable to the pod racing scene in Star Wars I. One thing I've noticed about drivers here in Provo is that they take a very long yellow light (regardless of the timing of the actual light itself). I think events like the one you experienced, the time I tried to get off the plane first, and the Provo yellow light show us what a person thinks about himself and those around them. Obviously, they think that they are more important. If they understood the message they were sending, would it change the action? I know I won't be trying to exit a plane like I did ever again.
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