Random acts of unkindness

I’ve been working on my grumpy look for years. I wrinkle my nose, pout, and frown so hard that my eyebrows obstruct my vision. I wedge earphones into my ears, blasting music that I don’t even like. I get absorbed in dark little fantasies, imagining that the bus I’m on suddenly explodes, or that anthrax starts snowing down from the ceiling of my lecture theatre. I look, in my mind, rather like a thoroughly disgruntled troll.

“That’s a big book.” Oh God. A slimy-haired businessman is sliding into the seat next to me. The bus is half empty! I grimace; “Sure is, I’ve got a test in ten minutes and I’ve really got to finish this play.” I shuffle as far away from him as I can and get back to my book. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see him peering at the cover. Here we go again. “Shakespeare” he says. I don’t reply. “Shakespeare” he says again, a little louder. I narrow my eyes and say “Yup”.

“Do you know that Shakespeare invented the word ‘lonely’?” he asks, poor sod. I feel a little guilty as I slam the book closed, push past him, and move into a spare seat two rows ahead.

The test goes okay. I’m on the bus home, in a slightly better mood this time. I can’t help looking at the man sitting opposite me. He looks like a crazy scientist, with a thick white beard that rivals Dumbledore’s (yeah, I know him).

He smiles, leans forward, and says “Do you know that the universe is expanding at a speed that is faster than the speed of light?” I was right! He tells me that he works as a hydraulic technician. Sounds impressive. He looks chuffed as I show vague interest and ask for more information. “I fix buses,” he says.

He talks to me about space from the bus station to the basin reserve. I can’t work out whether he’s actually making sense or if he’s using fake words to try to impress me. I literally have no idea what he’s saying, and I’m starting to get annoyed. My nods become less enthusiastic, and I end up staring out of the window. I’m pretty sure that he’s oblivious to the fact that I’m no longer listening.

“Do you like Star Trek?” he asks, making his space talk seem somewhat less reliable. “No,” I say, trying as hard as I can to look like a kid who can smell something disagreeable. Undeterred, he proceeds to summarise the entire storyline for me, unaware that his babbling is falling on deaf ears.

Despite my best efforts to appear sociopathic, there is something about me that seems to invite odd people to vomit strange words all over me. I have friends who like getting into long conversations with total strangers, but I don’t understand why. Chances are, if a person is so lonely that they try to strike up a conversation with a stranger at a bus stop, there is some-thing seriously wrong with them.

Bollocks to this happy clappy, let’s be nice to everyone business. I’m trying to have a cigarette in peace.

I broke my back last week. I wish I had broken it doing something cool, like falling out of a plane and narrowly escaping death, or rescuing septuplets from a burning building, but I didn’t. I fell in a big hole, actually. It’s been a shitty week, but I’m past the worst. This came, incidentally, when I realised after a bathroom trip that my boyfriend was going to have to pull my underwear up for me.

I don’t know if it’s the morphine, but over the last few days I have seen some light in my situation. See, for the next two months, I am to don a silver back brace, one that makes me look rather like a turtle with its shell on the wrong way. Being in so much pain has taken my grumpy look to a whole new level—I can snarl harder than I ever could before, and I’m pretty much permanently frowning. On top of all of this, I’m pretty sure sponge baths aren’t as thorough as showering, and I haven’t looked in a mirror for a week. I can’t see many whackos approaching me now I’m an angry, smelly, indestructible ninja turtle.

Oh God, I’m one of them. A smelly hag wearing a bullet proof vest, my knickers at my ankles. I hope someone on the bus will talk to me. I’m so lonely.