Mean People Suck

I was riding the bus yesterday with my mom and on one of the stops, an old man (he's probably in his late 80's) got on holding a wilted branch of bougainvillea flowers. He was smiled and presented the flowers to the bus driver when he got in the bus. I guess he was giving it him as a thank you. Here where I live the bus system is fairly new and two of the main bus routes are still free. The bus driver, very loudly, said, "Throw it away." Waving away him away, he closed the bus doors and continued to drive. The old man sat down on the seat behind the driver and gave kind of an embarrassed chuckle. Why couldn't the bus driver just take the flowers, and later on after the old man got off, throw it away himself?

My heart broke for the old man. I continued to watch him the rest of the way, thinking what just happened was similar to kicking a puppy. I vowed that when I get off the bus, I was going to walk pass him and say some nice comment about his flowers. The old man beat me to it though because when the he got off at the mall, he gave his flowers to one of the old ladies that helps and announces the bus schedule. She took it and gushed how pretty they were and pretended to put it on her hair. The old man was smiling again.

When I asked my mom if she saw what happened, she said she didn't even see anything (I guess because she was busy talking to me at the time). Then, she said that maybe the old man was not right in the head. This got me a little angry because that did not give the driver (if he was thinking the same thing my mom was) the right to be mean to the old man. I was also angry at my mom because this was the first thing she said, and was not sympathetic at all. The old man was doing a nice thing; it should not matter if the flowers were wilted and ugly, or if he was "crazy."