Making the elderly a priority

I SPEND a lot of time on public transport.
Everyday an hour of my life ebbs irretrievably away while I sit on either the bus or the train and avoid breathing in.
(I have a spectacularly regular talent for attracting some of our smellier citizens. Honestly, just because your dog eats its own feculence doesn’t mean you should, too. And at very least, it’s not an open invitation to sit next to me).
But the point I want to make is how fabulous ‘priority’ seats are.
I’ll tell you why they are so great.
They are for our senior citizens. They are for our less able-bodied citizens.
They are not for our rich. They are not for our elite. You cannot buy your way onto a priority seat.
I love that our people, that our Government, put the comfort, ease of access, and status of our elderly and disabled before that of our nouveau riche. Egalitarian prestige!
“I don’t care if you wear an Armani suit, if she’s on a pension she gets to sit by the door.” And this from a culture that doesn’t reward or care for our elderly or disabled nearly enough.
In a world that has seen our mild-mannered conductors morph into ‘transit-guards’, it is heartening to see that some social morays are still looked upon favourably.
On the bus the other day I got chatting to an 83-year-old woman. I don’t know her name, but I know her story (and her smell).
You see, I gave up my seat for her. It was a simple act borne out of courtesy and my mother’s training, as much as anything else, but it set a spark in her eyes. She sat down and began to tell me about her children – they didn’t turn out the way she’d hoped.
She told me about the war and the boys that didn’t come home, and those that were still lost at war despite returning. She herself loved her brother-in-law. Desperately.
She was telling me this and I realised – she’d probably not even told her own family that fact, and here she was telling me, a total stranger.
She had lived her life. She deserved that priority seat. For the elderly, we should do more than give up our seat, we should give up our time as well.
Unless they smell.