You Say, “Times, They’ve Changed.”

I say, “Yes, I know, but some beautiful things remain.”

Fall. It’s coming, I felt it today for the first time this year. When I went outside at lunch, it struck me so profoundly. I don’t know why it hits me like this, but it does. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who’s happy to see summer go and autumn come. It’s not that I don’t like summer; it’s just that… I love fall. I can’t understand why I’m so emotionally tied to this one season, either. Shouldn’t summer have made more of an impact on me as a child? All those summers in BC at bible camp when I was so happy? But no, something about the beginning of fall just makes me feel like I’m waking up after having been sleeping all year. When I was a child, I thought that seasons changed instantly. One moment it’d be summer and the next it’d be fall. I woke up in the middle of the night, once, as a kid in late August and had the ‘fall feeling’ I still get. “Fall just came,” I thought then, and the next day was noticeably colder than the day before. I thought that I had a special power. I thought I could feel fall, feel it with my heart, completely independent of seeing leaves change or sitting in that cold wind. Today, though, I had to feel the wind to get the feeling. I guess by now I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I don’t have a special power, but I still don’t know what my fall feeling is. All I know is that it makes me feel happy despite current circumstances, and that sounds okay.

Anyways, what I really intended to write about today is… social hierarchy.

So, a few days ago at the bus stop in the morning, the driver of my bus quite harshly rebuked the 16-ish year old boy for not letting me on the bus before him, saying he should learn some manners. I was actually quite embarrassed. In many situations these days, I don’t expect to be treated differently because I’m a girl, and getting on the bus is one of them. After years of taking the bus to school, fighting for seats, saving seats… of course girls weren’t let on first. It was chaos even as it was. I guess what I’m trying to say is… sure, it would have been courteous if the kid would have let me on first and I probably would have noticed if he had done, because he was much closer to the door than I was. However, in cases like this, I don’t consider what he did to be discourteous.

I’ll admit, I haven’t looked for one, but I wonder if there is some sort of social hierarchy drawn up somewhere, or if it’s just something that’s meant to be engrained in us as we grow up and learn ‘manners’. A hierarchy that would say, “Let women with children on the bus first, then seniors, then ladies,” perhaps? And are there conditions attached to this? Here is why I ask: Most often at my bus stop there are only two people, a man and myself. He’s definitely over 65 but he lets me on first every day. The reason for it is, I think, that I always have a bus pass and he always pays with coins and asks for a transfer. So, the bus leaves, maybe, three seconds sooner if I get on first since I just have to flash the pass. Is three seconds enough to disrupt the social hierarchy? Are the glances I get occasionally from bus drivers only in my head? Would he still let me on first if I were a boy?

I guess it doesn’t matter really, but it just makes me curious.

I just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman and it was a sweet book. One goddess, Eostre, had “eyes the colour of a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it.” It makes me sad because I just ordered 2 boxes of “aqua” contact lenses. They make my eyes green, but I think if I ordered “green” lenses, I’d have eyes the colour of a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it. And that would be awesome.