No Exception

Living one of those lives where you can never seem to catch a break- where raw deals keep flying at you like dodge balls in P.E. class, the days where I got to sit back and let my worries vanish were the best. And those days just happened to be whenever I hung out with my best friend, Davey. We always had the greatest yet, more often than not, peculiar adventures together, and inside jokes to last a light year. National Best Friends Day was no exception. The day was already strange to begin with, Davey was half recovering from being sick with a nasty cold, and we hadn't really begun our day until 1pm. We walked to meet up with each other at a school in the middle of both our houses. Deciding what to do, our consensus was the beach, however, after sprinting to the bus stop we only then realized a three hour bus ride was maybe not something we wanted to do on a stuffy hot June afternoon. “Well why don't we go to that cool park we've always wanted to go to?” I suggested. Bad idea. “Sure!” Davey agreed and so we were off. This was the first bus ride of the day, but certainly not the last. Foreshadowing to an event that would occur later that day, Davey had seen an advertisement for fathers day as we passed by a Dairy Queen shop, and bluntly suggested that Father's Day was the most irrelevant and unnecessary holiday. I quite agreed. “Are you sure you know where this bus goes and where we're supposed to get off?” I nodded hoping I was right. That's when a random man turned around and felt the need to comment, ‘you girls are lost.' Was he offering to help? No. He was simply wasting breath on a completely useless unhelpful sentence. After finally reaching our desired location, it was quickly evident that maybe this wasn't the safest area to be hanging around in. Doing our best to avoid being mugged, and after having to look at three street maps, we found our way to the bus station where we would attempt to turn this glorious day around with a trip to a small beach much closer to us. We made it to the bus just in time, and without any wait we were off. The only occupants on this small bus were the bus driver, Davey, and I. Everything was smooth sailing until a man whom we will call, Chummy, gets on. Now, Chummy was not looking too good, nonetheless I was never one to judge, so I sat quietly but I could tell Davey wasn't too comfortable with our new guest. Firstly, as Chummy hopped aboard, he communicated that he did not have any money to pay for the bus as he was going to get money from his ex-girlfriend right now. Okay, fair enough, I'm sure we've all forgot or ran out of bus money one time or another. He took a seat right behind the bus driver, with Davey and I only being across the isle and one seat behind him, otherwise known as very close proximity, one could argue perhaps too close. Right away Chummy dove into a one-sided conversation about the perfect way to clean open flesh wounds, with a little bit of future plans on how Chummy might obtain some money. The bus driver responded accordingly as Davey and I sat in fear. Yet, we were determined to get to the beach so we looked out the window and pretended everything was fine. But that perhaps wasn't the best idea as the bus driver pulled over and low and behold, another creepy man hopped aboard. Now this man sat even closer to us than Chummy- he sat right in front of us. How wonderful. This guy was clearly intoxicated, and there was a white residue covering both his left and right hands. That's not all though, turns out he and Chummy were friends. They soon struck up another uncomfortable conversation together. Davey being more paranoid than I about situations such as these, was not having it. She looked out the window and put on headphones with no music playing just to make herself blend in and look casual. However, I wasn't as lucky as Davey for I was sitting in the isle, kitty corner to Chummy and directly behind residue hands. The terror we felt was growing, but I paid for this bus ride and money was not something I could afford to waste especially because of a bunch of uncivilized men. Notice how no women made unnecessary comments or made me feel uncomfortable that day… just a simple observation. Anyhow, it wasn't until Chummy turned to face me, and asked, “Want to see my open flesh wounds?” Without waiting for a response, and then proceeding to in fact show me his disgusting flesh wounds that I cracked. Davey turned her head, but I wasn't so lucky. I got the absolute joy of seeing this man's nasty drug abuse wounds. So fun. I quickly pulled the bus stopper and we stepped past the two lovely men and exited through the only door on the bus in the middle of country roads at a sketchy bus stop. After regaining our sanity, we still refused to let men ruin our day, so we started on our confusing post-traumatic hour and a half walking journey in the hot sun to the beach. To make a long story short, it wasn't worth it.

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Alissa Mak

Don't underestimate the power of young minds.

Hong Kong, China