Member-only story
A Bus Ride I’ve Never Forgotten
A single, teenage father, a crying baby, and no one helped
I recently took part in a 10-day, short-form writing challenge. One of the writing prompts was to “… tell us about a day you knew you did the right thing.” That was one of the prompts that I struggled with. I had no idea where to start. I had been “doing the right thing” since I was a kid. It’s just a part of who I am as a person. Once I started writing I had to not only stop myself but I had to chop it back to under 150 words. Not an easy task after so many years of being in service to others, and I’m not even talking about my jobs.
It’s called being humble. People who do the right thing for the right reasons do it because it needs to be done and more often than not, they are the ones standing there while the world holds its collective breath and waits for “someone” never realizing (or too lazy to care) that they are the “someone”.
I was on a Metro bus headed to the New Carrollton Metro station. It’s a subway just outside of D.C. I was sitting in the first forward-facing seat. I hated riding sideways. I liked being able to see where I was going. This came in handy one day when I was on a different bus route and the driver thought she was having a heart attack. I stood beside her as she struggled to pull the bus into the nearest Metro…
