Bus ride

In order to determine exactly how much I can get for a piece of jewelry I plan on pawning, I take a bus to the mall in Lincoln. The walk to the bus stop is cold and dreary, a stark contrast to how the mall will feel, and I see faces outside of all kinds of people.

As I reach the bus stop, I hear a little girl screaming and crying. I would investigate the matter, but the mother's cursing and telling the girl not to cry as the mother puts the girl's earring in tells me all I need to know. I wonder for a time why the mother is forcing the piercing upon the child, but that too is made somewhat apparent by the fact that the girl had apparently taken the earrings out during school. At some point, the girl starts coughing and the mother warns her not to make herself sick. I laugh at the idea in my head that by coughing, one could somehow contract a disease.

I confirm my bus route and then go to sit down. A little boy is walking along one of the cement sides to a tree plot. The mother who was fighting with her daughter's ears tells Bubba to get himself down from thing. The child is barely three years old, blue-eyed, and svelt, and I wonder to myself what qualities the mother thought the child had that would deem him a Bubba, before I begin to wonder what Bubba might be short for.

There are no unoccupied seats near the front of the bus, so I take a side-facing seat near the back. A girl sits to my right and listens to her iPod as she gazes out the window. I gaze out my window, too, for a time, until an old lady nearer to the front of the bus offers me a cross engraved with the words "God loves you," and asks me to pass a similar cross to the girl behind us. It never hurts to be reminded of why Jesus died.

I get to the mall, and have my jewelry's value estimated. $120 isn't too bad a price, and if I start at a higher price at the pawn shop, I just might be able to get that for it.

As nice as it is to know that I can get some good money for this, it's more interesting to think about the people who ride the bus on a regular basis. In front of me right now is an older man in a fedora. A woman in the seat next to me has a plastic wristwatch clipped to her backpack.

What are their stories, outside of the bus, away from the bus stop? Will I eventually get mugged in my regular use of this on the bus?

Nobody knows but they.