Regrettably one hears of many instances of road rage these days. But before the term “road rage” was coined I was involved in an incident that could have been called by that name.
Many years ago I was attending technical college in the north of England in a night class for my mechanical engineering qualifications. This class followed a full day of study and finished at 9 p.m. when it was quite dark. I then had to walk to the bus-stop to catch the bus for the journey home.
The double-decker bus came and I got on it, paid my fare and went upstairs. There were no other passengers on the top deck so I went right to the front and sat in the right-hand front seat. With 20 miles ahead of me my thoughts soon drifted off to wherever thoughts go. I had nothing to do but go over what I had learned in the preceding several hours and contemplate the hours of homework that lay ahead of me during the coming week. As one is likely to do I fell to humming a few tunes and to tapping my feet in time to those melodies. Time passed and I went on tapping both feet in an assortment of rhythms. I did this more or less subconsciously.
Suddenly on a deserted road away from any regular bus-stop the bus halted and the engine shut off. I thought that the bus had broken down in the middle of nowhere. How long would it take to get it started again, as in those days nobody had cell phones to summon assistance? Resignedly I settled down to what looked like being a long wait before I got home. But this was not to be!
I heard somebody coming up the stairs and turned to face an extremely annoyed bus driver. “Is that you?” he asked me. The next words are a politely paraphrased summary of his remarks. “Are you the idiot who has been banging his feet on the roof of my cabin for the last several miles? You have been annoying me! What do you think you were doing?” It then dawned on me that I had been seated directly above the driver with only a thin metal floor between my feet and his ears.
I hurriedly offered my profuse and sincere apologies and promised to stop my foot practice immediately. The driver accepted my apologies and understood when I said that I had been at college since 8:30 that morning and that I just was not thinking. We actually parted on good terms and I sat very still for the rest of the way home. What the lower deck passengers thought about the unscheduled bus stop I do not know and I was not likely to tell them the reason for it and thus possibly provoke another road rage event!
Road rage results were avoided! But I am thankful that the driver was really very understanding about it all and realized that there was no malice intended on my part. I can appreciate that it must have been very irritating while driving a double-decker to have some clown banging on a metal drum a few inches from his head for mile after mile. Since then I have never sat in a front seat of a double-decker. Nor have I drummed my feet. Come to think of it I have very rarely traveled on a double-decker bus since and have always had a great respect for bus drivers!
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The only other tale vaguely related to events on buses concerns when I was aged about five. It was in England during the Second World War and there were not a lot of buses around and those that were around tended to be rather crowded. Also it was during the blackout and there was an absolute minimum of light shown by and in all vehicles.
It was a cold, wet night and I was sat on my father’s knee. Small boys only got seats if there were no adults, especially ladies, standing and on this bus there were no ladies standing, only men. I was rather bored as small boys can easily become.
Bus seats all had ashtrays in their backs and even in those war-time days of scarcity they always contained the pitiful and messy remnants of cigarettes. I thought that it would be a good idea to empty the ashtray in front of me. But where to dump it?
It was the custom then for most men to wear a hat with a brim and the man in front was wearing one. Aha, I thought, isn’t that just the place ready-made for dumping stuff? So under cover of darkness I proceeded to transfer the contents of the ashtray into the man’s hat brim. Nobody else noticed anything. That is until soon after I had completed the transfer and the man got up to get off the bus. His actions shook his hat and a cloud of ash and cigarette ends cascaded over him and his neighbours. It must have been a good-sized ashtray and I had occupied myself for some time emptying it. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?! In the ensuing confusion I assumed the typical pose and expression of one who does not understand what it is all about. This is an instinctive form of self-preservation, but it is unlikely to fool any grown-up!
However, as I said before, the bus interior was blacked out and it was a dark wet night. No harm was done, and the bus driver was clearly anxious to get on with his journey. So I escaped any possible retribution with no blame attached. In other words I got away with it! On reflection this incident does raise several questions such as: 1) Why did I ever do such a thing? 2) Why did nobody else see me doing it, or at any rate say nothing about it? 3) What did that man (and the other passengers) think when he stood up? 4) How did he think that his hat brim became a dustbin? 5) Did those other passengers think that this was some devious enemy trick?
I don’t have the answers even after many years of wondering. The remembrance of the event can give me a smile. But I have never done it again, or even been tempted to do it. After all I probably wouldn’t get away with it a second time!
Peter Kendal is a freelance writer in Vernon who writes regularly for The Morning Star.
