I got on the train at Stansted, and was determined to watch
a movie on my phone; it was an obscure version of A Christmas Carol by Dickens, but I have to admit, I was somewhat
jealous of my privacy, my ability to just watch that movie and be left alone; that’s
all I wanted. It was snowing lightly, and I could see lights out on the towns
and houses; I’m a geometry teacher, so I especially noticed the triangles of
the lit-up trees, and the places where colored lights, green and red, or
perhaps red and blue, would go around a house or a roof, and make rectangles, parallelograms
or rhombuses. But as I said, I wanted to focus on this movie, and I put earbuds
in and turned it on directly.
My car had maybe eight people, but at least six of them were
like me, watching or listening to their phones, self-absorbed. Near me was a
child being ignored by his mother; she, too was on the phone. The child had
dark eyes, and a sad face; he mumbled something, but, even when I took out my
earbuds, I couldn’t hear him. I went back to my movie.
Now in my teaching job, I had a mentor, Mrs. Hathaway, who
had died seven months earlier, but whose memory remained on my mind, because
she had taught me so much. But now, to my surprise, from the back of the car,
came a woman who looked exactly like her. Now I say exactly: she was homeless,
ragged, much older than the Mrs. Hathaway I had known. But she was exactly the
same person; I could see it in her soul. I panicked; the Mrs. Hathaway I had
known was dead! I knew it, and I had even been to her funeral. The woman in
front of me, as I said, looked exactly like her, except that she had aged maybe
thirty years, and lost everything she owned. She walked right toward me, and
looked me straight in the eye. I had taken out my earbuds in amazement as I
simply watched her, and tried to show no emotion at her ragged appearance. But
she said only one thing, “Listen to the children!”, turned on her heels, and
went back to from where she came.
Now, as a teacher, I listen to the children a lot. In fact,
I have a way with them; they tend to tell me things I don’t even want to know.
They tell me about abuse in their home, and about violence; sometimes I don’t
quite know what to do with the information. I try to focus on their skills in
geometry, but I can’t help but know them as people, and it breaks my heart
sometimes. Ah, but I say this to justify my actions on this weekend. Now, I
simply wanted to watch my movie. It was not my fault that I didn’t hear what
the little lad mumbled, the lad who was with his mum, who was being ignored,
who was clearly troubled by his world. It was my day off, and it wasn’t my
place to get involved in his problem anyway.
At Bishops Stortford the mother and child got off, and the homeless
woman too; she was long gone, leaving me to wonder about what she had said.
Several of the people who were still on their phones remained in the car, and
stayed on their phones; now a man with a little girl got on the car, and walked
over and settled near me. I had my earbuds out again, but I’d really have
rather watched my movie. Nevertheless the girl spoke directly to me, right
away, in front of her father, who could hear every word she said.
“You shouldn’t ignore
little children,” she said. “You grownups are always busy, always on your phones,
and I can see that,” she said with a sweep of her hand, indicating all the
other people on the car. “But it’s not the kids who have trouble in their lives
that grow up to cause trouble. It’s the kids you ignore. You shouldn’t ignore
them!”
Now this advice cut me to the bone, because in fact it
sounded very much like something Mrs. Hathaway might have said, about watching
out for the quiet kid, the one who gives you no clues about the pain he or she
is in. But in fact, I hadn’t ignored this girl; in fact, I’d let her talk, I’d
kept my earbuds out of my ears, in order to hear her advice. The father gave me
a benevolent smile, as if to say, I can’t control the kinds of things my
daughter says, and we fell into a kind of silence.
London, I must say, was quite pretty, with its Christmas
decorations on many of the houses, and towns decorated on their streets. The
train passed through Sawbridgeworth, Roydon, Hoddesdon, Broxbourne. The light
snow turned into slightly more substantial snow, and we could see the snow
building up on the yards of the houses. The Christmas lights reflected on the
snow. When I put my earbuds back on, the performance was somewhere in the
middle of the Ghost of Christmas Past, with Tiny Tim, and Cratchit, and those
characters, though I had trouble remembering them, and in fact I had trouble
concentrating. I wanted simply to be distracted, to be in my own world, to not
be bothered by people on the train. The little girl sat and stared straight
ahead, as if she were disappointed that I had not followed her advice, or at
least talked to her. But I didn’t want
to. It was my day off. I wanted simply to be left alone.
Now at the Tottenham Hale stop, this little girl, and her
father, got off, and now another young lad, about the same age, holding hands
with his mum, got on, and, to my surprise again, walked right toward me. What
is this, I thought, that they would walk right toward me, like this? And that
his mum would clearly be ok ending up wherever in the car this boy would
choose? Nevertheless that’s what happened. Again, my earbuds were out at the
stop; I was available. I sat and watched them approach. I was hanging on until
the Liverpool Street Station, and had nowhere else to go. I was not about to
leave, just because this boy walked up to me.
He, too, had brown eyes, and was very cute, and was probably
just a touch wealthy. He was not like the poor boys I was watching, when I had
the chance, in the production of A
Christmas Carol. He was well dressed, well scrubbed, and very polite.
“It’s not about money,” he said. “This time of year,
everyone’s all about the money. You spend this, you spend that, you spend some
for the poor. But it’s not about money.”
He then went on to talk about how he and his mum were going
Christmas shopping in the center of the city, or some such thing, and it was
clear from what he said: money was not a problem in this family. Nor was it
really, for me. I had a teacher’s salary, which was not great, but it was
adequate, and it afforded me a nice flat, a decent life, the ability to go to
town once a week. I wondered why he said this. Did he think I thought it was
all about money? Yes, I’ll admit, there are times when we all think that.
Money’s all that matters, and all that. But I was not especially bad that way.
If I wanted money, I wouldn’t have been a teacher.
The boy squirmed a lot, as young children do, and the train
lurched into Liverpool Street Station. The boy and his mother got up to get
off; I too was getting off the train, for a connection somewhere, I don’t remember.
I’d been unable to finish my movie, too distracted by the situation. But this
is when the third child approached me.
She, too, was a little girl, and she was holding hands with
her mum; they were walking alongside the train as it stopped, and we were all
going our respective ways. She stopped directly in front of me, and looked
straight at me, as if she’d been looking for me, in the station, and knew, now,
that she’d found me. In the background was one of those guys with bells, and a
santa hat, perhaps a former alcoholic, out there ringing the bell to get
donations for some poor children.
“Life is short!” she said. “Some people, you will never meet
them again. You see them here, or on the train, that’s it, after that, they’re
gone! If you have anything to say, say it now! Now’s the time! That’s why I’m
telling you this! I have to go, bye!”
And she, too, turned on her heels, being dragged along to
her mum, shopping somewhere no doubt, leaving me with my earbuds still
dangling, a movie unwatched, wondering what, if anything, I could have said. I
in fact had nothing to say. Leave me alone, was all I wanted to say to anyone,
all day, and yet I knew now that, on this day, that was not going to happen.
I knew, now, that I had failed these kids in one way, though
I had heard all three of them, really four, if you count the very first one. I
had my earbuds out, and, as the old lady had advised me, I had listened to the
children. I hadn’t ignored them, or refused to listen, or turned away. Yet I
knew they were right; this world they lived in had too many people on their
devices all the time, and I was like those people; I’d come to prefer my
devices. And for what? What were we really getting out of them? Nothing,
really; we got nothing that was better than an exchange with a young child. It
was a dark and silent world. It was still snowing, and everyone was in a hurry;
I put my phone away now, having things to do.
