A sudden bang shatters the calm of a packed bus, jolting me into a past I thought I'd left behind. For a split second, I’m not just a driver, I’m somewhere else entirely. And all because of one unsuspecting walking stick.
When a Walking Stick Sounds Like the End of the World
Picture this, a packed bus, mid-afternoon, teetering at a busy junction, my foot delicately feathering the brake like a concert pianist caressing the keys. Every passenger, blissfully unaware of the precarious ballet I’m performing with traffic, just wants to get where they’re going.
Then, it happens.
A sharp BANG!, a noise so loud, so sudden, that my heart attempts an unauthorised departure through my ribcage. It’s the kind of sound you don’t want to hear while threading through lanes of impatient motorists, not unless you enjoy adrenaline-fuelled existential crises.
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For a split second, time freezes. My hands grip the wheel a little tighter. A dozen heads jerk up in synchrony, wide-eyed, scanning for the impending catastrophe. A pigeon outside takes flight in sheer terror. Even the baby that had been wailing in the pram stops mid-cry, as if reconsidering its life choices.
But me? I’m not in the driver’s seat anymore.
I’m somewhere else, somewhere I thought I’d left behind. A place where the air had a certain weight to it, crisp, still, expectant. Where sounds didn’t just happen; they meant something. And where a bang like that wasn’t something you ignored. It was a signal. A moment to react, to assess, to steady yourself.
The thing about noise is that you don’t just hear it. You feel it. Deep in your bones, in the muscle memory of movements practised over and over, movements I hadn’t made in a long time but hadn’t quite forgotten, either.
I blink, the city rushing back into focus just as an elderly gentleman shuffles forward, smiling apologetically. “That’ll be mine.”
There it lies, an innocent-looking walking stick, completely unfazed by the chaos it has caused, rolling lazily across the floor as if it hadn't just sent me tumbling down a memory hole.
I let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding. “Sir,” I say, with the measured calm of someone who has just aged ten years in ten seconds, “next time, could you warn me before you deploy the sonic boom?”
The passengers chuckle. The moment passes. I gather what remains of my nerves and continue the journey, still half-expecting the walking stick to cause another jump scare at the next bend.
But for the rest of the shift, that bang lingers, not in my ears, but somewhere deeper. Because no matter how far you think you’ve moved on, some sounds have a way of finding you.
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