Maybe a young person thinks they’re doing an “aged” person a “favor” when they automatically offer their seat at the front of the bus. But some “elderly” people, particularly women, do not find the so-called gesture to be anything resembling a favor at all, so much as an all-out affront. An attack and a judgment on their “aesthetic.” No, it’s not seen as a favor, but rather, as a needless reminder of their perceived “decrepitude.” Alas, how one looks on the outside is not necessarily how they feel on the inside. And they would never think of themselves as anything less than an eternally young, hot bitch were it not for the little assholes posing as “good Samaritans” while using public transportation.

Like Erica Gallagher, for example. A twenty-something blonde waif of a bus passenger who learned the hard way that you don’t presume to “do a good deed” (especially as they never go unpunished) that ultimately serves only as a means to make yourself “feel better.” About what, who can say? There are all manner of reasons and things that can make a person feel baseline shitty. By doing the bare minimum to show you “care” about “humanity” now and again, it can double as a “balm” or “salve” for those unpleasant and unwanted feelings of shittiness. 

This was undeniably what was behind Erica’s thinking when, after already ignoring the first elderly man who came onto the bus (complete with fedora and cane “props” to really drive home the point of his elderliness), another visibly older woman boarded about two stops later. Something that, Erica noted to herself, was the main curse of riding the bus in the middle of the day (what is better known as “off-peak” hours…but they remained peak if you happened to have the luxurious non-schedule of a senior citizen). Passing Erica by while scanning the rest of the bus for a seat, Erica decided to do the “noble” thing—forced though it was—and call out to the woman to offer up her seat. Except that the woman didn’t seem to hear Erica’s urgent shouts of, “Excuse me! Hey! Excuse me!” 

Before the woman could get too much farther toward the back of the bus, Erica stood up and tried, as best she could, to non-threateningly grab her by the sleeve. An act Erica herself would have responded to with extreme disgust if the shoe were on the other foot…which perhaps someday it would be if she managed to live to a “ripe” old (oxymoron) age. Though it was a question mark for many of Erica’s generation, what with climate change effects and all. This woman, however, didn’t appear surprised or even insulted by Erica’s unsolicited touch. She simply turned around and stared at Erica blankly, as though she couldn’t possibly imagine what business Erica might have with her. When Erica then motioned toward her seat and asked, “Would you like to sit here?,” the woman exhibited even more confusion. Like she still couldn’t fathom what, exactly, about her would merit such a query. As though she had no awareness whatsoever of her age. 

After a few seconds, it dawned on her how she might actually be perceived by someone like Erica. So she finally replied, “Oh. That’s kind of you, miss—but I’m fine.” So it was that the woman left Erica standing there with her proverbial dick in the wind. Flapping, flaccid, at half-mast. She could feel the eyes around her staring, judging. This is how it must have felt to be elderly in general: constantly being looked at like some sort of freak, an alien. It was like these eyes were making the appraisal that she had somehow done something wrong—offended the woman with her attempt at “charity”—even though all she had tried to do was right by what some would call “the old bat.”

Sheepishly nodding her assent at the decision handed down to her, Erica returned to her seat. She possessed about her the air of a kicked dog, feeling foolish for trying to “help” and having it rejected. Almost like the woman could tell her proposal was false, that Erica’s “pure intentions” were sheer and utter bullshit. What’s more, the man with the cane gave her a look that exuded how endlessly betrayed he was by Erica. After all, why had she offered her seat to that woman instead of him? Erica just thanked her lucky stars he was white so that the discrimination card couldn’t be played (unless you counted misandry).

Still, it didn’t spare her from his icy glare for the remaining duration of her bus ride, rendering the six minutes it took to go three stops into something that felt more akin to six hours. As Erica’s stop at last approached, she started to get up, always one for “being prepared.” But, this time, her attempt at preparedness backfired as she stood up right at the instant when the driver abruptly hit the brakes, causing the bus to lurch forward, thereby propelling Erica backward in a freefall motion that landed her straight into the lap of the elderly man who she had rebuffed by not automatically giving up her seat to him. 

Erica scrambled to rise into a standing position again as he cried out in pain, his old, brittle bones somehow tortured by her firm, supple body. In fact, maybe the real torture was having someone like Erica on top of him, even if only momentarily. For it was a cruel reminder of the type of woman he could never have again. 

After managing to stand up with the lithe agility of a gazelle (albeit an extremely embarrassed gazelle), Erica scurried toward the back exit after yelling a half-hearted apology at the man. As she walked out the door, the woman who had refused Erica’s seat curled her lips into a devious smile and said, very insincerely, “Hope you didn’t hurt yourself.” And so, Erica was given the bitter taste of what it must be like to get infantilized all the time in the public space, assessed instantaneously as being somehow “handicapped” just because of one’s outward graying and wrinkled appearance. 

However, as this woman seemed to want to prove to Erica, sometimes age really ain’t nothin’ but a number. Not to mention yet another societally-backed source of discrimination under the guise of “being helpful.”