They’re Not Going To Throw You Under The Bus

I’m a fairly young-looking girl. I’ve recently started working a fairly horrible shift — three am to eleven am — sorting parcels to make some extra money for Christmas, around three miles from my home. I don’t drive, so I bought a bike to make life easier, as there’s no one I know that can give me a lift at those sort of times.

This morning I set off from home as usual. It was pretty icy out, and I blamed that for the slight veering and wobbling along the way. About ten minutes in, I realised that my handlebars had misaligned, and were getting looser and looser. Thinking that by the time I got home to take it back I’d be late for work, I decided to just push the d*** thing to work and deal with just being a few minutes late… completely forgetting that the route I take is cycle-based into an industrial area outside of town, and most of the rest of the way is pitch-black and without pavement or a sidewalk. But at least I had my visibility vest from work, and nothing happened apart from being rained on.

I finally finished work at 11, realised that I was exhausted, and I couldn’t risk veering all over the road when there was actual traffic, but at least I could catch a bus halfway and just push my bike the rest. I saw an off-duty bus driver pull up at the parcel depot I was leaving to collect a parcel, and thinking that I’d never tried to take a bike on a bus I should probably ask before detouring to the bus stop. He told me that unless it’s a long journey route, there’s no bike racks or space, and none the city buses in this area allow them. And at that point, I realised how much I’d been counting on the idea of not having to walk the whole hour in the rain. I was exhausted. I managed to hold back the tears that started to form and thanked him for telling me. I began slowly pushing the dang bike in the general direction of home, trying to map a walking route on my nearly-dead phone.

About five minutes later, the same guy pulled over next to me in his not-in-service bus and told me that it wasn’t ideal, but the route to the depot to drop his bus off went quite close to town, and he wouldn’t mind dropping me off.

I almost began to see the world as if I were in some anime, and a shining white Knight was offering to help. My eyes widened and glistened as I could only croak the word, “Really?”

My house was actually nearer the depot than the town centre, and this wonderful person dropped me off less than two minutes from my house, for free. He spent the journey asking questions and taking my mind off how awful I’d been feeling since starting these horrible shifts, and telling me how things will get better.

I know it’s a stupid and small thing in the grand scheme of things, but at that moment it felt like the single nicest thing anyone had ever done for someone. And I’m not one for fuzzy feelings or faith in humanity. But today, at least for a little while, faith in humanity seems like a viable concept.