Today was an absolutely beautiful day. The sky was blue, the sun was out, and everyone still wearing winter wear were struggling with their first butt-sweat outbreak of the season. Warm weather is wedgie weather. Ask your meteorologist.
As for me, I was sitting towards the back of a bus in one of the forward facing seats. I was hazily glancing out the window, completely lost in a happy Spring daydream as the voices from my earbuds encouraged me to "get on the floor and do the New Kids dance".
Before I could get on said "floor", I was immediately distracted by a fly that landed on the window next to me. This was the first fly I had seen in MONTHS. Recently, I have been obsessed with nature thanks to shows like Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson, Planet Earth, and other nature documentaries. Needless to say, I found myself overjoyed and fascinated with this fly. This might seem a bit cheesy, but I was having a real intimate moment with nature. I removed my ear buds so I could fully appreciate this occasion. I zoned out and suddenly I felt like I was connecting with this tiny fly on an emtional level. The fly and I are so different and yet ultimately we are the same. We are, afterall, both made up of the same star stuff.
I wanted to reach out to this fly somehow but I knew any sudden movements would cause it to fly away. So I decided to start blowing air onto it very softly and gently. But my initial blowing wasn't quite gentle enough. The fly immediately moved from the window to the top of the seat in front of me. I knew next time I'd have to be even softer.
This time, I blew the air just softly enough. The fly didn't move at all. Suddenly, everything else around me stopped. I could no longer see the traffic outside, I couldn't hear the obnoxious coughing from some nearby passenger on the bus. Heck, I couldn't even smell the butt sweat anymore. All that mattered in the world at this moment was me and the fly. I continued to blow air gently on the fly over the next few seconds. It's such a rare moment to connect with an animal. This is especially true somewhere as urban and man made as a Toronto city bus. It was a moment I knew I'd never forget and I didn't want it to end. I blew one more time when suddenly reality and humanity came crashing in. The obnoxious cougher was at it again. The fly was startled and flew right past the tiny old man in the seat in front of me. The same tiny old man who was looking back at me with an annoyed death stare.
Wait, what? How long was this tiny old man sitting in the seat in front of me? Was that him making those obnoxious coughing noises? And that's when that old familiar rush of panic hit me like a ton of bricks as I made an uncomfortable realization:
I had just spent the past sixty seconds softly and sweetly blowing into a strange old man's ear.
Stupid fly. I should've squished it.
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