Eleven Degrees. The clear white sunshine lighting everything up is a traitor for making the outdoors look so inviting when it is only eleven degrees outside. My face stings, and I wish I had worn my hat instead of just my ear warmers. I watch my shadow exhale a long stream of mist that streams away from my sillhouetted head across the grey-white sidewalk. The bus should be here any minute.
I'm leaning against one of the stout brick pillars lined up outside the transit center. The sun is rising higher in the sky behind me. I'm one of a dozen or so people who for some reason choose to wait for the bus outside, rather than going inside where there is heat. We stand around silently with backpacks and sack lunches - or one guy has grocery bags in hand - waiting for the arrival of the bus that will take us towards campus. No one says a word.
Looking at the guy in the green jacket standing just to the left a few feet in front of me, I seriously consider starting a conversation with him. Should I mention how cold it is? How the bus always seems to be later when it is cold outside? Maybe I should just comment on how no one is talking. I could ask him what he is studying; I'm pretty sure he is a student. I start humming quietly to myself while I mull this over, as if to prep my vocal chords.
He seems to sense the threat of an impending conversation and starts milling around idly. He comes to rest on the other side of the girl with the red jacket and black hair. I catch him glancing over at me accusingly. I return his gaze, not fearing the eye contact.
It's welling up in me, the urge to just say out loud - at a normal speaking voice that everyone would be able to hear, even over the idling of the waiting buses - "Isn't it funny that we are all here with so much in common but nothing to say to each other?" I'm going to do it. I want to do it. How would they react?
I don't do it. I don't have a reason to. I don't know how much any of us have in common. The backpacks, the sack lunches, they could all be red herrings. Perhaps we have nothing in common at all and no reason to talk to each other. What good would it do anyway?
I keep my peace, holding my silence through the remainder of the wait, through the ride up to campus where we all get off, and all the way to my office.
