“Find a spot in Winnipeg and find a negative story.” Those were my instructions. Easy. I’m heading down to a bus stop on Main St. where I’m likely to wind up writing a story about Winnipeg’s poverty issue.
Boy did my story take a turn.
I sat for one hour at a bus stop in silence. I wasn’t the only one. I’m not sure who was screaming louder the cigarette-butt strewn lawn of City Hall or the people at the bus stop. The sun was beaming – nature would’ve indicated it was a cheery, feel-good, spring-like day. But the overwhelming smell of feces in the bus stop was putting a damper on the mood. People were coming in and out of the shack with their Giant Tiger bags. One by one I looked at them. They looked at me. They stared towards the direction the buses would be coming from. My eyes wandered from the oncoming traffic to the guy sweeping the City Hall dirt from the sidewalk onto the dark grey snow and mucky lawn back to the people inside the shack. Fine. We didn’t know each other. Why would anyone say anything? That wasn’t the unusual part.
It was the mother and daughter sauntering off the bus hand in hand. The mother slightly ahead with the focused look on her face and the daughter a couple steps behind bobbing her curly brown hair behind as she cheerfully followed her mother. But not a word.
It was the pair of exhausted school girls waiting for their bus together. But not a word.
And nearly 40 minutes in to my experiment came the most unusual. At this point I wasn’t saying a word until I heard someone else utter a breath of language. A friend from school comes along. She waves and cracks a small smile. I smile and wave. She doesn’t come into the shack. Instead she stands directly in front of me, on the outside of my glass cage. Waiting. Five minutes later, her bus comes. But not a word.
I wasn’t upset or anything. I get it. Taking the bus is like down-time for most people – time to decompress and unravel their day. It’s almost bus etiquette not to talk. When one has their headphones in, another never suggests they take them out. When people shuffle onto the bus, everyone looks down in case they see someone they don’t want to talk to. Apparently same goes for standing and waiting for the bus.
The question is: was this a positive experience? Or a negative one? I can’t help but wonder if we’re living in a world that keeps us so connected, yet we’re all living in disconnect.
PS What broke the silence you ask? Three women chatting about which bus they were going to take. They got on seconds later. And the rest of us were back to standing in silence.
