cause and effect

This morning, I watched a little old lady miss her bus transfer by half a dozen steps. She was that close and the oblivious #0 drove away, leaving her to endure icy drizzle and switchblade wind until the next #0 rescued her.

The bus we were on, the #1A, squealed to a stop at the Broadway and Ellsworth intersection. Simultaneously, the #0 pulled up right around the corner. Using universal bus-speak, my driver tapped his horn with rapid precision, screaming at the #0 to wait for two disembarking passengers. Ba-ba-ba-ba-beeep. The first passenger off the #1A was an adult male with a trim build and a ratty duffle bag. He leaped off our bus as the doors opened and trotted over to the idling #0. Right behind him was the little old lady. Her shrunken and bent 5' 1" frame was lost in the folds of a wool overcoat and her wrinkled face peeked through yards of swirling scarf. Her overly large and overly thick glasses reflected the #1A's fluorescent light tubes as she grabbed the chrome railing to ease her way off the bus. With her too-large purse in tow, she did her best to hurry. Her best wasn't enough. The #0 pulled away.

When the #0 lumbered off without the old lady, my shoulders sagged and I slouched in defeat against my window seat on the #1A. Fucking universe sucks. Somehow, I had become emotionally invested in this little old lady's pursuit of her bus and, as a consequence, I perceived the events as an injustice. The Broadway light turned green and my bus rolled away through the dark morning. Disappointment and irritation mingled in my frontal lobe and I was compelled to assign blame for the old lady's misfortune. I wanted to blame the driver of the #0, but I did not believe that he made a conscious decision to leave the lady stranded. He simply did not see the tiny lady bundled in too much fabric and shuffling as fast as her aged legs could carry her. I wanted to blame the man who disembarked ahead of the old lady; he should've told the #0 driver that there was one more passenger behind him. I had to assume the man didn't know the old lady was attempting a transfer. Once again, I withheld blame. Obviously, my bus driver was not to blame. He blasted his horn and did his best to alert the #0. Perhaps though, the #1A was behind schedule. If the #1A had arrived a mere 30-seconds sooner, the old lady would have had plenty of time to cover the last six steps to the #0's doors. As I reflected upon this line of logic, I realized that my bus was running behind schedule and I knew the cause of its time slip. Me.

I hit the snooze button on the alarm this morning and, consequently, I nearly missed the bus. In fact, the bus blew right by me as I emerged from the black alley I cut through to get to the Kalamath stop. Not being one to accept defeat, I shouldered my backpack and sprinted out of the alley with my black trench coat flapping about my pumping legs. Assuming no cars would be speeding down Kalamath at 5:45AM, I blindly zipped across four lanes of deserted Kalamath. My nearly impossible goal was to catch the bus at the 7th Avenue and Santa Fe bus stop, half a mile away. I cannot out run a bus; I knew this. I rationalized, however, that if the #1A hit every single light between here and there I had a fighting chance. Sure enough, the bus hit the 8th Avenue light red and I was able to catch up. My stride did not let up and I raced through the red light, thus taking a brief yet emotionally empowering lead over the bus. Witnessing my futile determination, the bus driver pulled up beside me and made an unscheduled stop at an unsanctioned location. I was grateful and breathless.

In hindsight, those seemingly innocuous seconds wasted on my behalf resulted in that poor old lady missing her transfer later in the route. I am to blame for her misfortune.

Or am I?

I was running late to catch the bus, but I was still well within my float time. I try to leave the house every morning by 5:40AM, however I can leave as late as 5:44AM and still catch the buss if I jog. Today I left at 5:42AM. I should not have missed the bus.

This past weekend, our power went off briefly. The sound of the neighborhood transformer blowing was an echoing crack reminiscent of gunshot. Thankfully, the power company had the problem fixed within 20 minutes. That's customer service. As an effect I had to reset all of the clocks in the house, which must have originally been set ahead 5-minutes without me realizing it. The true blame for the old lady's predicament belongs to the power company, because in my electricity-less state my clocks were expunged. Or does the blame belong to the yahoo down the street who, while trying to install a new 220-volt outlet for his Pleasure Master 3000, fried the transformer? Or what about the clerk at Home Depot who convinced Mr. Pleasure Master that even a legally brain-dead six-year-old could install a 220-volt outlet? Or is it Home Depot's fault for hiring the clerk who convinced Mr. Pleasure Master to self-install the 220-volt outlet that fried the transformer that killed the electricity in my house, which made me reset all the clocks a bit slow, resulting in me being late today and the #1A wasting priceless seconds to accommodate me, which ultimately led to the calamity of a little old lady not having enough time to traverse the final six paces to the #0 and tragically missing her transfer on a frigidly wet Thursday morning?

Or…?
...and so it was written, shenry at 4/29/2004 10:49:00 AM.
...and so it was appended with .