ShaunWin retweetledi
I've been driving this same commute for six years. Today I finally pulled over to watch something I needed to see. 🧡
It was a regular Tuesday morning on Kingsway. I was stuck at a red light when I noticed a little boy maybe eight years old, standing alone on the sidewalk with his bicycle tipped against a fence. He wasn't crying. He was just staring at his chain, the way kids do when they know something is wrong but have no idea how to fix it.
Then a city bus pulled up to the stop right beside him.
The doors opened. The driver a big guy, uniform, whole route to finish stepped down onto the pavement. Not to help someone board. Not because it was his stop. He walked straight over to that boy and crouched down in front of the bike.
He worked that chain back on with his bare hands. Thirty seconds, maybe. He stood up, gave the rear wheel a spin to check it, then nodded like a mechanic satisfied with his work. The boy climbed back on without a word, the way kids do when they haven't yet learned to be surprised by kindness and pedalled away.
The driver wiped his hands on his pants, walked back to the bus, and pulled into traffic like absolutely nothing had happened.
Because to him, it hadn't. It was just the next thing that needed doing.
A woman standing at the stop turned to me and said, "Did you see that?"
I said I did.
She just shook her head and smiled. "Nobody's going to believe me."
I don't know that driver's name. I don't know his route number or if he'll ever read this. But somewhere in Vancouver there's a little boy who got home on time today because a stranger decided his two minutes were less important than one kid's afternoon.
ㅡShirly Brian
English
