Wisdom

The weary bus stopped, five feet from where I stood. It sat there for a moment until the doors groaned open. I stepped up and into it, deposited the money in the machine and nodded at the driver, even though the man paid no notice to me.

Searching for a place to sit, I saw only four or five open seats, none of them by the window, my favorite place to sit. I took my place near the front of the bus, maybe four or five rows from the front, and I found myself sitting next to an elderly gentleman.

He nodded to me as I sat down, and I nodded tersely, nervously maybe, back at him. He kept his eyes averted from the window, and I knew he craved conversation.

"Nice day isn't it?"

"Yeh."

"So, where are you heading to?" It was here that I realized I was going to have to talk to the man, though I didn't begrudge the obligation (it is a bit awful for me to call it an obligation, so perhaps it would be better to call it a welcome obligation...i suppose that's a little better).

"Up towards the lake shore to visit some friends. I'm not sure of the stop or the road, I only know the area when I'm supposed to get off." The man's exaggerated nod punctuated my sentence.

"That's nice, that's nice...are these good friends of yours?"

"Somewhat. Nobody I would consider lifelong friends but they are friends."

"That's nice, that's nice..." His words echoed in the almost near silent bus, a strange occurrence during noon on a city bus. Our little talk nearly dead, gasping its last breaths of air, the old man resuscitated it.

"You look like a college student...you go to school anywhere?"

"Yeah, I go to Northern, during the fall and spring. I'm back home for the summer." The man nodded again, approving my answer.

"Whaddya study?" His eyes searched me, as if he were trying to guess the answer himself.

"I'm majoring in English and minoring in Philosophy," I answered. "I hope to get a P.HD. within something like literature or English, but I'm not exactly sure how that's going to turn out." The man's eyes opened wide and his smile deepened.

"That's sounds great, really great. So I'm talking to a future doctor, eh?" He rasped a laugh and I chuckled myself. "You know something? It's probably better that you don't know how it's going to turn out." He coughed for a moment, and began talking again, his hands moving in exaggerated gestures, "I had no idea what I was doing when I was your age, and it made it so much easier. Kids today, I always hear their plans they have, how they mapped out every single thing they're going to do in the next twenty years. Hell, when I was twenty the only three things I worried about was having something to eat, somewhere to sleep, and hopefully some pretty young girl to share the bed with." He smiled widely again, his eyes twinkling with a strange glow.

"So your going into English and Philosophy, huh?" I nodded. "How's that working for you, you get good grades?"

"Their all right."

"Ha, ha, I've heard that before, ha, ha." I smiled down into my lap with a bashful smirk.