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The Bus Lane At Lion 's Park Train Station

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The number nine bus, packed full of students eager to get home, pulled into the bus lane at Lion 's Park train station. Halfway there, I thought, happy to be done with another stressful day of classes. After most of the other passengers disembark to board the train, those of us which stay on the bus each have our own seats.
The bus driver steps off the bus, as he does each day, to smoke a cigarette. Each day I contemplate how the complex interplay of individuals can become simple routine, reduced to the same exhausted ride to school every morning, matched to the seemingly endless ride home every afternoon. I wouldn 't be able to cope with the chaos that some people enjoy, I prefer my simple, reliable routines. Nevertheless, every day I contemplate the paths each of the passengers had to follow for this scene to play out as it does each day. The path that inevitably leads to me sitting on the bus and watching the driver smoke his cigarette at the same time, in the same place, five out of seven days a week.
I look up to another familiar scene playing out beyond the Plexiglas windows of the bus: a group of homeless men passing their days exposed to the elements. Some are splayed out across the lawns of an adjacent office building, others are digging in the cracks of the pavement for cigarette butts. Nothing special, the same group of men stand in the same places doing the same things every day.
I sit and watch the men and wonder why they are always here. Why do they always

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