There is a major national debate about how ordinary members of the public should respond to anti-social oafs on buses. My attitude is - speak to them, because the chances are they are so pathetic they can't deal with people challenging their challenging behaviour. Jimmy disagrees with me, saying that I will end up knifed or worse. But he wasn't with me on the bus this evening.
There was a man aged about 25 sat next to me, sprawled out, his feet on the seat opposite, legs splayed with that obvious message "Look at me I have a dick..." (to which my mental response is, yeah, so does nearly half the population; possession of a dick isn't in itself noteworthy). Having finished a call on his phone, he decided to let a series of ringtones play. Gosh, he has a phone that plays tunes, my god, how I fell in love with him and wanted to have his babies, right there. A phone that plays tunes! How sexy!
Instead, I asked him to take his foot off the seat. He pulled a face at me. I then asked him to turn off the crap on the phone, pointing out that he was merely telling the whole bus that he had appalling taste in music. Another face pulled. I told him he looked stupid, now everyone on the bus knew he had rubbish taste in music. No one else wants to hear it, especially not with that bad tone - I had better radio than that forty years ago. Take your feet off the seat, someone's got to sit there, you've probably got dogshit on your shoes.
At which point he showed me the soles of his shoes which obviously brand new and remarkably clean, but I thought, you sad bastard, you felt the need to show me the dogshitless state of your shoes. He's pulling faces like he thinks I am below contempt. I tell him again to get his feet off the seat. Because I am insistent, he obeys. I tell him once again to turn off the 'music' from his phone, reminding him that he's now told the entire bus how stupid he is, how awful his taste in music is. He pulls this really stupid face. Suddenly he realises that the bus is about to pull away from his bus stop and he jumps up, all frantic and panic, desperately ringing the bell. He gets off, and everybody else downstairs turns round and smiles congratulatorily at me. I had succeeded, in my rather drunken state, in humiliating a man who was so arrogant he didn't think the ordinary rules of considerate behaviour applied to him. It is so easy to bring down inconsequential squirts whose attitude is built on shifting sand.
