the only people having fun on the bus are the little kids

They stared out the window with their eyes widening and tracking the landscape. They turned one way, then the other, and pointed out something on the horizon to the person next to them—a funny sign, a strange-looking person, a building, an airplane in the sky. They yelled across the aisles to their friend—giggling and fidgeting about the speed of their movement and how they seemed to float above the public. They were separate touring entities—set apart from the masses and in a perfect view-finder for the city. They were safe and comfortable and excited.

What a relief to see adults behave this way for a change. The doors and windows of the city were finally opened up to show what I've been looking at for years—like paintings covered up in storage and then revealed to the open air. The light rail brought all of this to hordes of adults clamoring to get on board and fighting to get a seat. It moved fast and they didn't have to do any work. It was a moment of powerlessness and effortless bliss—like free-falling. Walk on board, look out the window and soon you'll be some place else.

Every day, kids on the city bus smash their noses and mouths to the smudgy windows (to everyone's disgust), shouting out every now and then to their parent or grandparent and sticking their finger where they just licked the window. They look around at everyone else on the bus—the placid faces staring forward and waiting for the next destination. Like a dog in a thunderstorm who barks and whines because the sky is falling and no one even looks alarmed, these adults seem to have no concept of the amazement that is presented to them just outside the window with hardly any effort on their part. 

Every now and then I'll catch someone noticing something and then pretending that they didn't. This morning it was an ordinary black bird that looked both ways, then hopped onto the tracks next to our waiting train. The guy 2 seats behind me either saw me seeing it or saw it himself. Either way, we both watched the twitchy movements of the bird while it poked around the tracks for scraps of food. It looked just like a person picking up items in a grocery store. Pick up, inspect, replace, retain, move along in short intervals. Without staring, I imagined the guy pressing his nose against the window, then squishing it sideways until the bird was completely out of view. Then he'd look up and around and notice me watching too. His eyes would get wide, he'd jump up and down while kneeling in his seat and say something incredibly observant and exclamatory like "DA!".  

p.s. while looking for a photo for this entry, i did a search for "child bus window" on google images and noticed that the only ones to come up were mostly kids on buses in other countries. so...not only is staring out the window a novelty but watching children staring out a window can only be fully appreciated while in another country??