A Tale of Unremarkable Courage

Every morning, I take a bus to work. You've seen them before, those schoolbuses that double up as private transport for office-going people (my carbon footprint looks good, no?) who wait punctually by the curbside for them.

So every morning, I get on this bus, greet the ladies who are seated behind me (only one of them ever deigned to reply), plonk down on my usual seat, get cosy and nod off to sleep. (Things get territorial if you take the same bus with the same people, every day, much like what happens in a classroom.)

Of late, though, I began to experience problems carrying out this usual routine. The culprit? Paper. Not any normal paper, mind you. Sheets and sheets of it. It's newspaper, wielded by the hands of the lady behind me who is determined to read it spread out in its full glory, instead of folding it up into squares politely like everyone else does on public transport (and on this particular transport, too). Everytime she flips to a new page, she jerks the paper heavily, straightening it, conking my head in the process. On particularly news-worthy days, the paper is thick and heavy, and the resultant conking gets rather so hard that it became quite difficult to get any shut-eye at all.

It's not like this obstacle to rest just recently came into existence. No, it has always been around, but recently it has developed to become much more acute than before. Perhaps Newspaper Lady thought she could gradually build up my resistance to the conking over time.

But I, determined to maintain the genial neighbourliness of our relationship, resolved to be tolerant and make no mention of it. (Even though at times I really wanted to turn round and pointedly ask her to read the papers with more consideration for others.) And so, too shy to comment, too embarrassed to ask, one, two or maybe even three months passed by for me in this uncomfortable fashion.

Oh, who was I kidding? On one particularly violent day, I received a knock after falling asleep with much effort. And that was it; enough was enough: Positively fuming, I gritted my teeth and, in a deliberate move, shifted to the outer edge of my seat.

And with that, my troubles were over. I smiled, settled down and smiled, happy that I could enjoy my morning naps once more, now that I was outside of her range - or so I thought. Nary a few days after my momentous move, the unthinkable happened - Newspaper Lady passed her weapon onto her seat-mate, who promptly began to rain blows at me. What use could she still have for it, after all, when she could no longer use it to torture me? I was devastated. I liked my seat on the bus, but I couldn't be as rude as to tell her how Newspaper Lady should be reading her papers now, could I?

A colleague and fellow bus-mate noticed my woe-begone look that day, and asked me what ailed me. I told her my story, and to my surprise, she nodded knowingly and said, "Yah, I had that problem too. That used to be my seat on the bus. That's why I now sit in front of you."

Then it dawned on me. Newspaper Lady was trying to get me to vacate my seat! There wasn't enough space, it seemed, for her to spread her paper just the way she liked it, so that she could read it from left to right, top to bottom, in one glance. Good for the muscles too, judging from the way she holds it up.

And so, my mind was made up. It was time to move. Far, far away.

The next time I took the bus, I cheerfully greeted her like I did every morning, then proceeded to prance happily to the back of the bus. And now, my dear readers, I am able to enjoy my morning energy naps undisturbed on the bus - except for the fact that the air-con blows relentlessly down on me, making sleep all but impossible.

Oh woe, woe is me.