abandon ship

I was riding the bus home in the dark today. I worked until 8:00PM. I was seated in that twilight zone between the front and back doors that's not quite in the bright lights of the back of the bus, and not quite in the front area that's dark so that the driver can see properly. At each stop, all the lights go on so that the passengers can see their way out.

I was quite absorbed in my book, so I hadn't looked up until my neighbour wanted to get off and I needed to swing my knees around to let him out. At that moment, the lights went on, and something caught my eye under the seat in front of me. It was a little, ugly, paper mache boat that looked a lot like a coffin. I knew it was a boat because there were two little, ugly paddles lying next to it. They were made of cardboard paddle blades attached to popsicle sticks with masking tape. The paddles and the coffin-boat were painted brown.

I imagine that it had been part of a school project, maybe something on Canada's First Nations people and their canoes. I wondered if it was the prized creation of a young student, the glowing centerpiece of a shoebox diorama. Or perhaps it had been the half-hearted creation of an older student and deliberately abandoned once the required marks had been collected. Or even worse, what if the young student had forgotten it on the bus on her way to school, and had cried over its loss and the tragedy of having nothing to hand in after having worked so hard.

My neighbour got off the bus, the lights went out, and the bus moved on.