One day, due to incompatible agendas and lack of planning with my wife, I ended up without a car on a day that I needed to resolve some things downtown and for some reason, instead of taking an Uber, I chose to go by bus to my adult life routine.
By coincidence, I met a colleague from my college days at the bus stop and we chatted during the 5 minutes waiting time, that chat about how was life after college if he still has contact with the other guys, that kind of thing. The bus arrives, almost full but still with some seats available and my colleague quickly sat on the left side of the bus, the side that at that moment was in the shade (logical and sensible decision for a more pleasant trip considering the 1:00 PM sun on a 30ºC day). I sat on the opposite side and he, not understanding, ended up doing the same soon after. At this moment it occurred to me that he wasn’t from there, he was just there, he didn’t take that bus very often and that’s when I had the urge to share this story.
The fact is that this blessed bus makes a tremendous zigzag through the neighbourhood and in the end when it gets to the avenue that goes downtown, it goes in the opposite direction and the sun starts to bother the other side of the bus. I knew this because I had taken that bus for years. At that moment, I was the experienced user and he was a novice, who would probably get a little frustrated 5 minutes later for having to do the whole trip toasting in the sun.
Immersion is there for that and through it, I also discovered that nowadays many people turn off their 3G when they get on the bus for reasons of insecurity, but this is a subject for another text.
PS: I don’t know if you also do this, but I use the same logic to choose seats on the plane when I travel, considering if it is worth it to go on the side of the sun and take the risk of having an image like this.
Photos by Dan Gold and Ant Rozetsky from Unsplash