I left the apartment area, crossed the street and waited for a 521 bus to come and take me back to my new home; a true Chinese home. The bus came and I got on and took an aisle seat, put the mop bucket in front of the seat, under my legs. The mop was in the bucket causing the handle to stick up between my legs. It was a very comfortable position and everything was out of the way and so I sat back to enjoy my trip back.
We made several stops with people getting on and off as usual. At one of the stops the bus driver started up rather quickly and at that moment two people realized there was a problem; me and the young lady in my lap. It seems that my mop handle was the same color as the supports in the bus you hang on to and sitting in an aisle seat put the yellow mop handle right where passengers expected to find a support to grab hold of. When the bus suddenly started and she lost her balance, her eye saw the vertical yellow pole and she grabbed for it not realizing it was me and not the bus that the pole was being held by. That was a point of excitement for a few minutes, but a growing concern for me. As the bus got more and more crowed, more people wanted to hang onto my pole. I couldn’t lay it down and even when I held it at an angle toward the window, people would still grab for it.
As I sat there trying to keep people from feeling secure by hanging onto my mop handle I couldn’t help but think of the many other things in life people hang onto to feel secure. Just as quickly as they were grabbing for the mop handle they grab for other things not trying to determine if what they are reaching out for is secure or not. When the bus comes to a quick stop or life suddenly ends, will you be holding onto something that is secure?
