Friday, July 09, 2004
I have restored my faith in the goodness of humankind.
Its so nice to have one of these incidents hit you that make you realize how wonderfully nice people can be.
This is seriously embarrassing but here goes…was going home on 12, uneventful day, post PE sleepiness, etc, and like most normal people, i got up and walked out of my seat when the bus was close to my stop. Remember, post PE sleepiness, plus i was
thinking like, oh damn, my marks suck, and oh damn, i have no money and i have 2 birthdays coming and hmm, whats for dinner, and…WHAM.
And the bus jerks, and before i can even
think of grabbing onto one of those swingy bar things that i’m almost too short to reach anyway, i’m flying. So i try to react, like
reach out and grab something! anything! but somehow that throws me off balance even more and i get tossed from somewhere near the middle of the bus to right in front, where i was fortunately rescued by all the nice people who got up to catch me. No kidding.
They actually stood there to break my fall. i just thought it was really sweet.
So i got up, dazed and confused and in pain (blueblack on my waist now, i crashed into a briefcase) and i was totally clueless. i had no phone, no file, no sigg bottle, and i was standing there trying to decide whether i should burst out in laughter or start crying. Then this funny guy goes, don’t get off yet! you must find your phone! and then did it, i started laughing.
And then all the way on the other side of the bus this lady yells,
i see it! It’s there! and half the world rushes to retrieve my phone from some under the seat corner, while the other half hangs onto me to stop me from falling. again. (embarrassing!)
Its unexpectedly nice when so many people who don’t even know you are so very enthusiastic and willing to help. I mean, seriously. This is living
disproof of the lousy theory that Singaporeans are an apathetic, selfish lot. It felt, i dunno, really good.
Haha, and i met the funniest little old lady who got off at the same stop as i did...having been on the same bus as me she had no doubt witnessed my humiliating fall…and when we got off, i discovered that (grossness) my right knee was totally messed up and you know, blood all over, etc, and i had freaky scratches all over my arms (re: briefcase) and this funny sweet old lady decided that, for the sake of the safety and survival of yours truly, she absolutely
had to escort me across the road, even though we lived on opposite sides. And she did, al the while lecturing me in Chinese/ Hokkien about the perils of
not hanging onto the bars when standing on a bus. I do not generally enjoy being lectured by little old ladies in languages that i can barely understand, but the whole incident was so sweet and so silly that i chuckled all the time she was talking.
And that was the uplifting event of the day, yeah, people
are nice and its great to find that out first hand. There is hope for human nature after all ;)
Life rocks.
Love ya.
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