Double-takes and ladders (Write of Passage Number Forty-eight)

It's a double-decker, but late afternoon on the last Wednesday before Christmas, and most of the seats are taken near the front. I squeeze to the back, where the long rear seat is unoccupied.

I'm rather startled when a young woman plops down next to me, as it isn't elder daughter, in town for Christmas and - I'd thought - on my heels. This girl is long and lanky, with laddered black leggings that she has evidently shredded herself. (I gather this is a thing.) She looks a bit tired -- or stoned. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Elder daughter slides into the seat facing me, and we exchange glances. As the bus rolls on, I remark, glancing up at the lack of headroom directly above my seat,"Good opportunities for concussion here, when we try to get out."

Before my daughter can reply, laddered lady drawls, "Yeah." After a pause, she adds, "I always come close to crashing down the stairs from the upper level."

This is Victoria, so I smile and nod amicably, while elder daughter carefully covers her confusion.

We all alight at the same stop - none of us has bumped our heads - and we see laddered lady saunter out ahead of us across Fort Street.

"That was so bizarre," chuckles elder daughter, who has lived in Hades for eighteen of her twenty-six years. "She thought you must have been a friendly lady just randomly chatting to her."

That's how we roll here, toots. Anyhow, judging the direction she's taken, she may very well be a neighbour in our building.