offense

Every seat is full, a crowded bus, but there’s no white noise. No one—not even those who boarded together—talks to one another. The quiet is simultaneously comforting and the opposite. It’s normal. I fight the silence with music through my headphones.

In more and more places, we isolate ourselves. We don’t talk about things we’d talk about in private and find endless humor in those that talk loudly into their mobile phones about their diseases or woes. We are careful of those around us and are stunned when others don’t similarly filter themselves.

Censorship of a community isn’t handed down through mandates. It manifests itself through self-restraint. The fear of offending rules conversations, the fear of criminals rules habits and the fear of failure rules lives; silence resonates.

“Whatever you do, don’t talk,” cuts the driver.

His voice over the PA slices through my aural fog. Some around me smirk and some laugh but most shift uncomfortably in their seats, looking around or trying to ignore the comment completely.

The driver jokes a bit more. He says something about being allowed to smile, something about trying to be a good bus driver. The crowd starts to loosen up, their reactions more pronounced.

We pass under the freeway and enter downtown. The bus stops at the light beside an intercity elementary school five or six blocks from the heart of downtown. It’s four or five stories with a playground a few levels above the street.

“How many of you think it’s cheap to go here?” the driver asks over the PA. Many people shift uncomfortably or smile uneasily, most pretend not to have heard.

I wonder what he meant. It sounded inane, slightly derogatory, just something injected into the vibrating quiet. Maybe he meant the school was cheap or the education was poor but that conflicts with his tone.

At the next stop, a woman stands and walks from the back out the front. She hesitates next to the driver. She says something I can’t hear with a raised hand, pointing, obviously scolding him.

“I hope I didn’t offend anyone else. I meant it’s a school downtown so it wasn’t cheap,” he says over the PA.

He cuts the PA and talks about high-rise apartments selling for around a half-million dollars nearby, justifying his ill-worded comment to no one in particular.