Sitting Close

I sit diagonally in bus seats, being blessed with above average height, leaning as much against the side of the bus as the back of the seat. This puts my head slightly further forward than the average person, and when someone sat down in front of me today it occurred to me just how close our heads were. There was this complete stranger and her ear was only 40cm from my face. It’s not that this was unusual, it happens all the time, but I had never really noticed it before, and that surprised me. I looked at her ear for a while, then stopped when I realised it was a bit of a weird thing to do. I was breaking one of the Rules of the Bus, albeit an unenforceable one. (In contrast to the ‘No Turning Round and Looking at People Behind You’ rule, which is enforced by the nervous and astonished stares of said people, stares which say, ‘hey, what’s he doing?, he’s breaking the rules, err...please don’t do that’.)

I looked out of the window at the car drivers below me, none less than 2 meters from a stranger, all separated by glass and metal, and I was glad that I could get on a bus and sit this close to someone who’s name I’ll never know, even if they did have ear wax.