Unfiltered Story #361391

I was on a bus going home when a woman gets on. She is rummaging for change and does not have enough. She looks rather dishevelled and I wonder if this is why no one is offering her the rest of her fare. I go up and she only needs 20p. This would be entirely unnoteworthy but I realise as I am giving her the money that she was a household name briefly after being in a highly successful British film nearly 20 years previously.

Normally I am a very frank person and say what is in my mind but fortunately I stop myself blurting out ‘oh you are **** ******’ as I realise that the circumstances show that things have not gone well for her, and that it is highly likely that she hates being recognised.

Sure enough when I look her up when I get home I find that she lives on that bus route, and that her acting career crashed and burned due to emotional difficulties that developed into mental health problems.

I was relieved that I had applied my filter just in time as I would have hated to have embarrassed her.