Never Judge a Book by its Cover

As I waited patiently at the bus stop this morning minding my own business, a tiny woman in bedraggled jeans and a matching denim jacket approached me enthusiastically and began wailing and gurning in my face. Alarmed, I looked frantically about me for some assistance but in true British style, everyone else pretended not to see the spectacle unfolding before them.

The clearly unhinged woman continued to gyrate in front of me and then raised her hand to her mouth to expel a chipped brown tooth.

'Shorry luv', she bellowed.

'That one'sh alwaysh fallin aaaht. Got a shpare shigarette?'

Horrified at the decaying tooth still displayed upon the outstretched palm in which I was presumably expected to place the desired cigarette, I shook my head timidly and muttered, 'No, sorry, I don't smoke.'

Undeterred, the woman then began harassing other travellers instead. This actually proved hilarious to watch as they were all even more terrified than I had been. One woman looked as though she was on the brink of haring off down the road to the next bus stop just to get a safe distance away from her.

When a bus pulled up, she pulled a sheaf of dog-eared travel cards out of her pocket and thumbed through them, eventually brandishing the newest-looking one. Then she boarded the bus in an exaggeratedly casual manner which, far from rendering her inconspicuous, only served to draw more attention to her. I struggled to suppress my mirth as she swaggered past the driver, flashing her expired travel card in his face at the speed of light and then scurrying to the nearest seat. Needless to say, she was promptly asked to deboard.

Apparently unabashed, she then continued on her doomed quest for a cigarette amongst the commuters around her, who scattered like scared pigeons. When the next bus came, a driver change meant that the exit doors were left open. Quick as a flash, she had energetically hopped on via this route and sat down innocently next to a startled mother and her child. Once again she was removed from the vehicle.

Once on my bus, I began to castigate myself for my initial reaction to C.L. (Crazy Lady). I tend to pride myself on being a fairly liberal character and make a great effort to avoid making snap judgments of people. However, this poor woman, a lisp and a rotten tooth her only crimes against me, had asked me (reasonably) politely for a cigarette and I had scared myself half to death and manically clutched my bag in front of me like a shield (tightly, in case she made off with it).

What did I have to be so snobby about? Chances were, if I knew half the situations this woman had faced in life, I would not have fared much better, and yet here I was instinctively treating her like a social leper. In actual fact, she was most probably a harmless, although slightly loopy, character who had got into some bad habits when she was younger. And if I had not happened to be born by chance to parents who did their best to ensure I received a solid education and steered clear of drugs, who is to say I would have ended up any differently if her situation had befallen me?