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 Addendum                                      Issue#31  -  18th April 2002
 URL: http://www.adden.tr.cx/
 Author : Phoenix
============================= Dear Mrs Entity ==============================
Dear Mrs Entity.

On the bus I observed (with irritation/pity) an old lady desperately seeking
conversation/company with the bus driver. This is a common enough sight -
she's old and lonely. I am sure that whenever she speaks (perhaps to her 
children or the staff at her `home') she is answered with nods. Evident was 
her habituation to such treatment: she was oblivious to the bus driver's 
efforts to answer her various questions. Her verbal torrent drowned him.

Just recently a swarm of 9? 10? year olds on a holiday outing had (oh I love 
tenses!) flooded from the bus, and volume within dropped. (In that silence I 
became aware of just how loud a bus engine can be!)

Disturbing that peaceful (relatively) rumble the old lady began to tell the
bus driver how all the youngsters "deserved a good whack to teach them to
shut up". Thus my irritation - how dare she be so interfering! (Hypocrisy?
Me?)

And pity. For it was clear that the woman had lost the time. Once she had 
been young and Time was hers. She had been loud and interested in boys...
she had flaunted the rules and pushed the limits, and earned a whack or two
herself. She had probably never mentally ventured into old age... and was 
unprepared when she realised the world was not the same. Her rather old-
fashioned views on the place of youth ("In my day," Yes, she really said 
that, "children knew it wasn't their place to speak.") was an attempt to 
relive her own youth.

How can I be critical of her conservatism? One day I may be sitting on a
bus complaining that "in my day children could say whatever they like, and
where free to learn from their mistakes, oh we knew our place".

Lustfully yours,

The Phoenix

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 Addendum                                      Issue#31  -  18th April 2002
 (C) Phoenix April 2002
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