Coming to terms with the trauma of being offered a seat on the bus

As an infrequent user of public transport, perhaps I’ve lost touch with the protocol when it comes to who gets first dibs on the seats – but the passage of time was never more acutely underlined than on the recent occasion when a young fella offered to stand up so I could sit down.

Now I’d be the first to admit that I will never be mistaken for a triathlete or ultra-marathon runner, and I may have been slightly out of breath – but despite passing the half century mark a few years back, I’m still independently mobile and in normal circumstances I’ve no issue with standing up.

So, when the lad, who might have been eleven or twelve, was elbowed by his mother to vacate his seat for the old boy trying to distribute his weight down the centre aisle, I never for a minute thought that someone was me.

I looked to see if there was a pensioner hidden behind me or a mother with a small child or a person on crutches.

But there was only me – internally still one small step from a callow youth, but externally a middle-aged man who appeared to more than one person to be in desperate need of a seat.

It would be nice to say that I knew the boy’s mother; that she’d spotted an old friend, and that we then had a long chat about the old days.

But I’d never seen her before.

Anyway, on second glance, I realised we couldn’t talk about the old days because we’d have been talking about different decades.

The look of surprise on my face at this generous offer couldn’t have been more dramatic if the driver had come down the aisle and asked me take over at the controls of the bus.

And while I morphed from startled to grateful as quickly as I could muster, clearly the initial look of disbelief left both mother and child distressed at how their good deed could have so spectacularly backfired.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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