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Youth is escaping me and I will soon embark on my post-mid-20 years. Once I crest the brink of 26, only the steep decline remains. First it’ll be the thirties, then the forties, and then if I’m lucky, death. Its shadowy countenance encroaches upon me like a fog. All this and it won’t stop raining.

In biblical times, the onslaught of rain could only mean one thing: time to build a boat. Four straight days of rain in Lower Mainland, and my shoes have come apart, ravaged by the torrent of flooding waters in the streets. I’ve secretly begun collecting plankwood to build my own private Ark, and just like Noah, I’ve already started my collection of pairs: two blondes, two brunettes, and of course, two breath mints.

My umbrella has also failed. Given its performance over the past week, I imagine it got tired of all this rain and just gave up. Truthfully, in the past four days, my umbrella has seen more action than I have in months. Its only a plain umbrella, not one that glows in the dark, not one that is coloured with pastels or leopard prints, just a plain, simple nylon umbrella.

And on this day, the fourth day of the Great Flood, I am standing in the aisle of the slowest goddam bus in the world. One that is powered by electricity and held together by what could only be Elmer’s School Glue. They’ve recommissioned all the tram buses from 1910 and sent them into the streets of Vancouver to rekindle their lost youth. Just by inspection alone, these electric buses would be put to shame by a buggy loaded down with rocks and dragged by a couple horses doped up on amphetamines.

Everyone beside me is wet. I’m wet. And each time the bus starts, it lurches forward with a heave pushing people together in all their wetness. But it seems everyone that has a seat is comfortably stationary. I decide that yes, I also want a seat, and for the glory of God, I don’t want any of these other wet passengers to touch me every again.

Further back, I’ve spotted an empty seat and make way for it, shoving past the city’s unluckiest bus denizens. But lo, what I see is not an empty seat, and my heart sinks. Its occupied by one of the cleaniest looking knapsacks I have ever seen. Seated beside this fine (pink) knapsack, presumably its owner, is a young black girl. Clearly, she did not want her knapsack to touch the filthy, nasty, dirty, yucky floor! Yucky bus floor! Poor knapsack!

Understandable in any other situation, but here and now, at 8:56 AM when I have just walked through hell to get to this bus, that seat is going to be mine.

Its too bad she caught me on today of all days, the fourth day of this wretched non-stop downpour. Yes, too bad I’m so effing mad right now that I can plainly see myself tearing that knapsack into shards and then picking her up by her shoulders, shaking her real hard and then asking why her knapsack is on that effing seat while the rest of the bus is packed with people standing. Sure, she might look like she’s only 8 or 9, but look at us! Bitter, tired, pathetic, wet, and more importantly, standing. Together we can defeat her!

I glance around to see why no one else has confronted this girl (and at the same time see if anyone’s got my back in case things get ugly). And I look, and I look and I notice something strange. Something definitely not right. Wait a minute, everyone on this bus… is white! Well, son of a bitch. I’m on a bus full of white people.

Since when did I become a minority again? I must be somewhere in Point Grey. In my neighbourhood, the overwhelming voice on the bus is not one to include “dude”, “awesome” or “for real”. In my neighbourhood, the overwhelming voice on the bus is a cacophony of mixed dialects each shouting louder and louder over top of one another, eventually drowned out by the crescendo of an old lady belting out the lyrics to her favorite Chinese opera.

So here we have a bus full of white people, one politically incorrect Vietnamese guy, and a black girl with a very clean knapsack. Before, I wondered why they hadn’t asked her to move over, but now the answer is reasonably clear. It’s because she’s black! Well F that. I’m a minority too, so move over, beeatch!

I continue my foray and made my way towards that seat. If this is where the minorities are sitting, then my ass is going to be on it, so you better move that knapsack before I get there. I know they got seats for elderly and handicap, but I didn’t know they started designating seats for minorities.

I continued my approach, ready to be as mean as grits. No matter what she does, I’m going to get her to move over. I don’t care that the next stop is my stop, its the principle of the matter. Closer and closer I get, and then something strange happened. 

She turned her head up to look at me with those big brown eyes, squeezing a doll in her hand, as if she already knew that I was just about to grab that doll and pop its head right off. She looked straight up at me, and before I knew what was happening, I had become her protector. I couldn’t do anything but smile down at her and brace myself against the lurching bus, making sure no one would come and make her move her knapsack. Like the Grinch, my heart grew two inches larger and I could not turn my rage on her.

I let her be, and we endured the rest of the trip towards a shared destination. Perhaps, I’m becoming more mature, letting these things win me over like that. Will I ever find that angry Asian man that for so long took up residence in me? In a couple weeks I’ll have turned another year, and its already apparent that I’m ready to buy my own car.