First
sentence of the story:
This is the story about a bus
driver who would never open the door of the bus for people who were late.
How
could this idea become a story? Think of some possible scenarios.
The
writer develops the first sentence:
This is the story about a bus
driver who would never open the door of the bus for people who were
late. Not for anyone. Not for repressed high school kids who’d run
alongside the bus and stare at it longingly, and certainly not for high-strung
people in windbreakers who’d bang on the door as if they were actually on time
and it was the driver who was out of line, and not even for little old ladies
with brown paper bags full of groceries who struggled to flag
him down with trembling hands.
Why
is this bus driver like this?
The
writer explains:
And it wasn’t because he was
mean that he didn’t open the door, because this driver didn’t have a mean bone
in his body; it was a matter of ideology. The driver’s ideology said that if,
say, the delay that was caused by opening the door for someone who came late
was just under thirty seconds, and if not opening the door meant that this
person would wind up losing fifteen minutes of his life, it
would still be more fair to society, because the thirty seconds would be lost
by every single passenger on the bus. And if there were, say, sixty people on
the bus who hadn’t done anything wrong, and had all arrived at the bus stop on
time, then together they’d be losing half an hour, which is double fifteen
minutes. This was the only reason why he’d never open the door.
What
kind of a guy is this bus driver?
The
writer develops his character a bit further:
He knew that the passengers
hadn’t the slightest idea what his reason was, and that the people running
after the bus and signalling him to stop had no idea either. He also knew that
most of them thought he was just an SOB, and that personally it
would have been much, much easier for him to let them on and receive their
smiles and thanks.
Except that when it came to
choosing between smiles and thanks on the one hand, and the good of society on
the other, this driver knew what it had to be.
There
is going to be a second character in this story – the opposite type of person -
so what will he be like?
There is going to be a second character in this story - who might they be?
Before
reading scan through and find the answers quickly:
1. Who didn't have a mean bone in his body?
2. What was Eddie's job?
3. Who was Happiness?
4. Who was in love with Happiness?
5. What did the bus driver want to be before he became a bus driver?
This
is the story about a bus driver who would never open the door of the bus for
people who were late. Not for anyone. Not for repressed high school
kids who’d run alongside the bus and stare at it longingly, and certainly not
for high-strung people in windbreakers who’d bang on the door as if they were
actually on time and it was the driver who was out of line, and not even for
little old ladies with brown paper bags full of groceries who
struggled to flag him down with trembling hands. And it wasn’t because he was
mean that he didn’t open the door, because this driver didn’t have a mean bone
in his body; it was a matter of ideology. The driver’s ideology said that if,
say, the delay that was caused by opening the door for someone who came late
was just under thirty seconds, and if not opening the door meant that this
person would wind up losing fifteen minutes of his life, it
would still be more fair to society, because the thirty seconds would be lost
by every single passenger on the bus. And if there were, say, sixty people on
the bus who hadn’t done anything wrong, and had all arrived at the bus stop on
time, then together they’d be losing half an hour, which is double fifteen
minutes. This was the only reason why he’d never open the door. He knew that
the passengers hadn’t the slightest idea what his reason was, and that the people
running after the bus and signalling him to stop had no idea either. He also
knew that most of them thought he was just an SOB, and that
personally it would have been much, much easier for him to let them on and
receive their smiles and thanks.
Except
that when it came to choosing between smiles and thanks on the one hand, and
the good of society on the other, this driver knew what it had to be.
The
person who should have suffered the most from the driver’s ideology was named
Eddie, but unlike the other people in this story, he wouldn’t even try to run
for the bus, that’s how lazy and wasted he was. Now, Eddie was
Assistant Cook at a restaurant called The Steakaway, which was the best pun
that the stupid owner of the place could come up with. The food there was
nothing to write home about, but Eddie himself was a really nice guy—so nice
that sometimes, when something he made didn’t come out too great, he’d serve it
to the table himself and apologize. It was during one of these apologies that
he met Happiness, or at least a shot at Happiness, in the form
of a girl who was so sweet that she tried to finish the entire portion of roast
beef that he brought her, just so he wouldn’t feel bad. And this girl didn’t
want to tell him her name or give him her phone number, but she was sweet
enough to agree to meet him the next day at five at a spot they decided on
together—at the Dolphinarium, to be exact.
Now,
Eddie had this condition—one that had already caused him to miss out on all
sorts of things in life. It wasn’t one of those conditions where your adenoids
get all swollen or anything like that, but still, it had already caused him a
lot of damage. This sickness always made him oversleep by ten minutes, and no
alarm clock did any good. That was why he was invariably late for work at The
Steakaway—that, and our bus driver, the one who always chose the good of
society over positive reinforcements on the individual level. Except that this
time, since Happiness was at stake, Eddie decided to beat the condition, and
instead of taking an afternoon nap, he stayed awake and watched television.
Just to be on the safe side, he even lined up not one, but three alarm clocks,
and ordered a wake-up call to boot. But this sickness was incurable, and
Eddie fell asleep like a baby, watching the Kiddie Channel. He woke up in a
sweat to the screeching of a trillion million alarm clocks—ten minutes too
late, rushed out of the house without stopping to change, and ran toward the
bus stop. He barely remembered how to run anymore, and his feet fumbled a bit
every time they left the sidewalk. The last time he ran was before
he discovered that he could cut gym class, which was about in
the sixth grade, except that unlike in those gym classes, this time
he ran like crazy, because now he had something to lose, and all
the pains in his chest and his Lucky Strike wheezing weren’t
going to get in the way of his Pursuit of Happiness. Nothing was
going to get in his way except our bus driver, who had just closed the door,
and was beginning to pull away. The driver saw Eddie in the
rear-view mirror, but as we’ve already explained, he had an ideology—a
well-reasoned ideology that, more than anything, relied on a love of justice
and on simple arithmetic. Except that Eddie didn’t care about the driver’s arithmetic.
For the first time in his life, he really wanted to get somewhere on time. And
that’s why he went right on chasing the bus, even though he didn’t have a
chance. Suddenly, Eddie’s luck turned, but only halfway: one hundred yards past
the bus stop there was a traffic light. And, just a second before the bus
reached it, the traffic light turned red. Eddie managed to catch up with the
bus and to drag himself all the way to the driver’s door. He didn’t even bang on
the glass, he was so weak. He just looked at the driver with moist eyes, and
fell to his knees, panting and wheezing. And this reminded the driver of
something—something from out of the past, from a time even before he wanted to
become a bus driver, when he still wanted to become God. It was kind of a sad
memory because the driver didn’t become God in the end, but it was a happy one
too, because he became a bus driver, which was his second choice. And suddenly
the driver remembered how he’d once promised himself that if he became God in
the end, he’d be merciful and kind, and would listen to all His creatures. So
when he saw Eddie from way up in his driver’s seat, kneeling on the asphalt, he
simply couldn’t go through with it, and in spite of all his ideology and his
simple arithmetic, he opened the door, and Eddie got on—and didn’t even say
thank you, he was so out of breath.
The
best thing would be to stop reading here, because even though Eddie did get to
the Dolphinarium on time, Happiness couldn’t come, because Happiness already
had a boyfriend. It’s just that she was so sweet that she couldn’t bring
herself to tell Eddie, so she preferred to stand him up. Eddie waited for her,
on the bench they’d agreed on, for almost two hours. While he sat there he kept
thinking all sorts of depressing thoughts about life, and while he was at it he
watched the sunset, which was a pretty good one, and thought about how charley-horsed he
was going to be later on. On his way back, when he was really desperate to get
home, he saw his bus in the distance, pulling in at the bus stop and letting
off passengers, and he knew that even if he’d had the strength to run, he’d
never catch up with it anyway. So he just kept on walking slowly, feeling about
a million tired muscles with every step, and when he finally reached the bus
stop, he saw that the bus was still there, waiting for him. And even though the
passengers were shouting and grumbling to get a move on, the driver
waited for Eddie, and he didn’t touch the accelerator till Eddie was seated.
And when they started moving, he looked in the rear-view mirror and gave Eddie
a sad wink, which somehow made the whole thing almost bearable.
1. What do you think the bold phrases mean, and what do they have in common?
2.
What did the bus driver and Eddie have in common? Why didn’t the author name
the bus driver?
3.
What things in this story are universal, and which are more peculiar to the
United States?
4.
Is this story about anything?
No comments:
Post a Comment