Bus ride of conscience

Today I was riding the bus in to campus. It was a clear, sunny day, I'd just had coffee at a shop a few steps from my apartment, and I had earbuds jammed into my ears which always gives me that closed-in, cut-off feeling no matter what's playing. Although it was just ten in the morning, the net effect of sun on skin, coffee in tummy, and muffled sounds, along with the rocking of the bus, soon put me to sleep.

I awoke at one of the stops when the bus knelt on its hydraulics to allow an old lady to board. Hanging onto her cane with a wobbly grip, she mounted the step then held a shaky hand full of change above the coin box. As the change clinkered in, I got up from the front seat where I'd been sitting and moved to a row two rows back. She teetered her head toward the driver, spoke a few words, then took my old seat and we were off.

When we got to campus and stopped at one of the stops at the edge of campus, the driver announced, "Next stop, hospital". It was clear this was meant for the old lady. At the next stop, the old lady got up, slowly made her way to the front door of the bus, and with the delicacy a child might apply going up stairs for the first time, laid foot on the sidewalk one foot after the other. I was awake to watch the whole process, and though it all only took a few seconds, I found myself impatient and burying myself deeper into what was playing on my MP3 player.

But in those few seconds, I also realized the hospital was across the street from the stop, and if there was a time when the archetypical good deed of helping an old lady across the street might be called for, this was it. Where did that call come from that sounded like a spike in my brain? And why was I not getting up at that exact moment when I realized this was the right thing to do?

By the time I summoned the will to do the action, the bus was off again. The next stop was the last, my stop, and if I'd been impatient before, I was even more so now. I wondered if everyone around me had had such thoughts, even as they looked obliviously away, out the windows. Before the bus even made the last turn and came to a stop, I was already at the back exit door.

The doors open, and I sprinted down the sidewalk. I thought about all those stupid workouts I'd done, out of vanity, out of self-concern, and the scene from Batman Begins came to mind, where Alfred sardonically tells Bruce Wayne lying under a burning log, "What good are all those push-ups if you can't lift a bloody log?". Bloody logs! Suddenly it became all-important to find this woman on the original side of the street where she was dropped and walk her across this bloody street!

I arrived at the crosswalk and slowing my breath looked across the street. No one at the stop. I looked down the road. No one with a cane. And toward the hospital. No one with a cane there either. I'd waited too long on a good deed, ran to make up for it, and come up short.

Afterward, I wondered, what is the lag between the right thought and the right action? At most times when I am not with people, or cut-off in my earbudded world, I am thinking of my own work, my own deeds, my own self. And then the opportunity arises to do something simple and good for others, and I take too long to pull the good trigger. I'm waiting now, for next time.