Maniac Bus Driver

The bus I got home after work today was driven by a maniac. Whenever he came up to a bus stop and somebody wanted to get off or on he slammed the brakes as though he'd suddenly realised he was coming up fast to the edge of a cliff. It's hard enough to see the cover of the book the girl next to me is reading without the bus driver pulling stunts like that. And he did it at every stop, including traffic lights. Driving up fast he would suddenly stomp on the pedal and the bus would slow down at an alarming rate which forced the people standing in the aisle to swing from the poles like monkeys spinning around chrome branches. A mad scene. A bus full of people growing angrier and more indignant after each violent screaming stop. Why didn't anybody say anything? They were angry, their faces glowing red and steam blasting out their ears, and the bus driver was probably doing it on purpose; a sadistic and satisfying action guaranteed to relieve some mysterious unknowable venom. But nobody said anything, simply let their faces grow more and more contorted with humiliated rage. Why? If it was Mexico you would have half a dozen passengers zooming up the aisle waving machetes, murder in their bloodshot eyes, but in Sydney we do things differently. We suffer in silence, and go home and write about it in our stupid blogs.