The 401.

Sitting on the bus a while ago, doing my thing, when this guy comes up to me and starts asking me if I'm going to school. I hit pause on my iPod, grumble a "Wherttt?" under my breath, and, upon hearing his original question, snootily answer with a hollow, "Yesh..." I sit for a few more minutes, awkwardly, jammed up against the side of the bus as if there were a large hole in the seat next to me that would suck me in if I were to get near it. He sits there, occasionally looking up at me. I chance a few breaths of air, and continue to remain motionless.

"Do you go to school with some of these people?"

"Yes."

"How many of these people do you go to school with?"

"Uhh, I don't really know."

The ensuing silence created a terribly uncomfortable stench that diffused slowly and filled the air of that couplet in the row third from the back. After what seemed like several days, but was actually no more than a few minutes, his stop was upon us.

"Goodbye. I work in the city."

"Mmmhmm."

A sense of relief washed over me as he departed from my 401, and I resumed my silent brooding, sans uncomfortableness. Disappointingly, my brooding was rudely interrupted by some jerk, shouting at me: "What was that?"

I tried desperately to ignore him, but his line of questioning was rather direct and persistent.

"What the hell was that?"

Pretend you can't hear him.

"I said, what the hell was that? You completely ignored that obviously lonely person, for no other reason than the fact that you couldn't be bothered to talk to him."

I'm not listening.

"Would it really have hurt to at least feign some sort of interest in his presence and what he was talking about? Couldn't you have simply conversed with him in a few sentences longer than 2 words? Maybe it would've given him a little happiness to talk to someone. He obviously doesn't do that a lot, as you could tell from his lack of real social skills, so why not give him a little love? Huh?"

Ok, I'm listening, but only because I am supposed to. I don't actually care, I only claim to.