In Continuum.

The bus was already pulling into the bay when I got into the interchange, and I don't remember dashing for the bus as frantically as I did ever before. I slipped on my way to the bus, and cursed at the puddle of water left behind by the rain that came down in the afternoon. I hated the feeling of chasing buses, hated the fact that I had to check the time every now and then to make sure that I didn't miss the last bus. But something told me that I am going to miss that feeling when I eventually get a car in the future, the feeling of chasing a bus in the middle of the night, through a shopping mall filled with homeless old men and teenage smokers. I reached for the seat at the back, still panting from the short dash for the bus just seconds ago, and allowed gravity to take hold as my body crashed into the seat next to the window. I still hate the feeling of chasing buses, but I guess I hate the feeling of not being able to share a great concert with somebody on the way home even more.

That was when I noticed the old lady at the front of the bus, the lady with the limp in her right leg. She was the reason why the bus was at the bay for so long, because she took forever to board the bus with her bad leg hindering her movements. It took her a great ten seconds just to climb up those two steps at the front of the bus, and reaching the top must have been some kind of achievement for her. I almost wanted to help her out while queuing up behind her at the entrance, but I thought it would be rather humiliating even for someone like herself. She was seated at the front of the bus, the seat facing the rest of the passengers in the opposite direction. Not a lot of people were on the bus that night, just herself and me seated at the back, and a few late night commuters sandwiched in between. They were all looking out of the windows, minding their own businesses and hoping to get home as soon as possible - save for me. I was looking at the old lady, dressed in her working uniform, sipping on a giant cup of left over iced lemon tea.

I couldn't tell what was written on the front of the shirt, but it was easy to tell from the color scheme. Black, white, and red, the standard uniform of a Pizza Hut employee. But they are usually students working in between schools, you don't see a lot of senior citizens working for a fast food chain very often these days, since our society has a false pretense of appreciating the contributions of our elderly when they obviously cannot care less about them. But there she was, probably close to the age of sixty, clad in the Pizza Hut uniform and sipping on a large plastic water bottle filled with a yellowish liquid that must have been the leftovers from the restaurant, warm and diluted iced lemon tea I supposed. As if it wasn't already difficult to see her struggle onto the bus, it became even more difficult to see someone like her drinking on a cup of leftovers at eleven in the evening, taking a bus home alone. If this is how it is like to be old, I'd kill myself. 

I don't know, I feel like I have been living in a bubble for way too long, though that is not to say that I have been purposefully pampered by my parents in any way. It's just that, there was an ideal way of growing up for me, and an ideal way of growing old as well. When to go to the army, when to go to an university, when to get a girlfriend, when to get married, and things like that. Even for a guy, I am sure we think about such things from time to time, nobody is going to tell you that "I envision myself to be divorced by the age of 29," that's not going to happen. We all have a perfect vision in our minds, an ideal way of how our lives would work out in the future. Of course, reality usually comes in and messes things up, it slaps you in the face and tells you to forget about those ideals, all those pretty little dreams that you had and forces you to face up to the music. That is usually the case, and I know that everything in between life and death isn't supposed to be like sliding a block of butter across a pane of glass. I think I have experienced enough, on my part, to know that shit happens on a day to day basis. Still, when it comes to growing old, I've been rather stubborn about it, still thinking that people usually grow old with lots of grandchildren, a lot of soap operas on afternoon television and a lot of retirement funds. 

But there she was, the lady from Pizza Hut, seated at the front of an empty bus at an hour to midnight after a hard day's work. I couldn't help but wonder to myself where her children are to provide her with a steady income, or why she needs to be working her head off till unholy hours with just a diluted bottle of iced lemon tea as company. Such things shouldn't be happening to people like that, people who already gave up their lives raising their children, finding a job, working their heads off for the better half of their lives. They shouldn't be working at fast food joints, they shouldn't be going home from work close to midnight, they certainly deserve a whole lot better than that. But then, I thought to myself, a realization of how naive I must have been, stepping aside and looking at myself objectively. In truth, life isn't as pretty as how we would put it out to be, and not every parent of every child gets to enjoy a happy retirement life at the age of sixty either. The thing about me is that I see my parents' life as a form of template, the way things should work out for every other people as well. But then I know of dysfunctional families, I know of violent families, and I know of families that are stuck in between. Things aren't the same across the board, not every family ends up like mine.

The saddest part of all is probably how she was probably used to going home that late, and the taste of leftover drinks and food as well. I have been pondering over it for the past few days, thinking about my future and the possibility of myself getting used to a job that I hate and dread. To spend the rest of your life doing something you hate, but you don't have much of a choice other than that is just a miserable life altogether. It is frightening to picture myself in that situation, or anybody for that matter. But I suppose, there are probably a lot of people, in fact the majority of the people out there in the workforce right now, who are doing a job they probably cannot care less about, but have grown used to it because "that's life", they'd tell you. And all those happiness that you imagined yourself to be in while being in high school or college, would be reduced and degraded to the likes of a bottle of diluted lemon tea. That's your happiness for the rest of your life, that is how it is all going to come down to. We can't do anything about it, and that scares the hell out of me.