I hopped on to the bus. I passed the double doors in the middle and sat into the first row behind them. In front of me, two steps down there was a flat with enough room to provide for pushchairs. But as I sat, there were no pushchairs there, even though two women were about to come to the bus carrying their children in them.
<em>About to.</em> Because what they saw on the flat would surprise even the most non-judgmental person: Long brown haired, bearded man on a wheelchair who had no left foot nor left hand, but a prosthesis with a hook that almost looked like homemade because of a red elastic band tied around it for whatever reason. On his neck he had some necklaces, one of which looked exactly like a chain taken from a bike. His face was reddish with a couple small bruises and he was tippling some pink/light red-colored liquor from a freshly opened plastic bottle. He accidentally dropped the bottle and put it liberally between a handrail and a window to browse his phone.
He caught quite some looks from children and one red-haired woman sitting in the front of the buss who'd see a considerable effort turning her face multiple times almost 180-degrees backwards to this bizarre view who'd put some Finnish Iskelmä (schlagers, old catchy Finnish hit music, usually melancholic, about drinking or the incompleteness of life) from his phone via a bluetooth speaker for everyone in the bus to hear, singing along with the lyrics.
Right in the next row, facing away from him, there sat about a 15-year-old girl with a blond long hair tied to a pony tail. She had a black mascara and eyeliner make-up on her and she had what I perceived a light scar up her nose, right between the eyes, which I could see when she turned back to talk to his dad. The man teased the dog feeding his/her own hair to him/her, which he thought was funny. But he wasn't mean, he obviously liked the dog, always giving it a rub after distracting it with his provocative hand movements in the air.
The girl only gently disallowed him.
Sometimes he would show something to her from his smartphone to which he at one point, caught a phone call where he said he was coming with his daughter, the blond girl most likely. I seemed like this already before by how familiarly they treated each others.
The man was dressed surprisingly well: looked like he was going for some instance.
<br/>We left on the same station and I headed to the train station leaving them behind me.
Then an Asian man ran next to passenger over the crosswalk yelling: <em>"Anteekshhi!!"</em> (Shhorry! in Finnish).
And I smiled to myself when I realized that I, the same red-haired woman from the bus, and some other man all wanted to see him make it into the bus in time when we all kept glancing back into the direction of the Asian.
Fortunately, he made it.
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In case your wondering: <b>that's not fiction.</b> No, that's literally what I saw as accurately as I can remember from my way back home from work today.
I couldn't help but feeling like I was watching a scene of a drama film. It was almost too real, like realer than real for something to see in an actual life; alcoholic dad on a wheelchair with amputated limbs with a daughter wearing black make-up around his eyes, and a dog. That's like an exactly written scene in a movie.
But I don't mean any of this in a bad way, not in a good either even though <b>that guy might've been the most bad-ass thing in its own wretched way.</b> But on the other hand, little unfortunate. Not like I was necessary pitying the girl for the potential burden of her father, I still don't know whether she suffers from it, if she lives with him or with her mom or both. She seemed like she had been there before, not anxious at all.
Nor am I judging the man or thinking he's a victim.
Actually, it was quite funny to me when he asked some kids leaving the bus what had they learned in school today? Here you need to know that I had <em>just</em> been doing intoxicant education/discussion with <em>those exact</em> kids that now were faced by this caricature of an alcoholic. <b>Well they didn't say they learned about alcohol.</b> Instead they went with: "We learned how to make pizza." Oh the irony life throws you at...
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't know what's outside of the buss for their lives, I can only guess.
It was like seeing the wretched side of life as it is. Not good or bad just wretched... almost grotesque, but not really, it was in front of me as is.
Uggh... I don't know, I thought about this on the train I hopped from the bus, but I simply can't describe this really accurately with the language I have. It's like there should be a word which is this state I'm trying to consider, but there isn't. Maybe there is but I'm not aware of it.
Anyway, wouldn't have guessed how life can unexpectedly turn out to be such a poetic experience.
