Bus Stop Lessons

Jessie stood outside at the bus stop that would take her from school back home, just as she had done for the past two years. She fiddled with her phone and thought about what she would make for dinner once she got home. Another student approached her asking which bus she was waiting for. Jessie answered. The student moved on and asked another person further down the block. An older woman approached and asked her how long she had been waiting for the bus. Jessie was surprised by how unusually inquisitive people were today and answered "7 minutes" as she kept her gaze toward the intersection where the bus usually rounded the corner. Hearing no response from the older woman, she turned her gaze toward where the woman had been, but the older woman was already gone. 

The bus was taking longer than usual. The same student who had asked about which bus Jessie was waiting for earlier approached her once again. Had he gone in a circle to approach her again from the same direction? Again she answered and again he went down the block asking other people the same question. Jessie had just finished pondering how strange this student was (some sort of compulsive disorder maybe?) when the older woman approached her once again. Confronted with the same question, Jessie was flabbergasted. Her upbringing didn't allow her to ignore the woman, so she answered truthfully, “14 minutes.”

In an instant she was back in her professor's office, where she was just before she left the building to wait at the bus stop. Something odd was afoot. Her laptop was in her hand as she was putting it away in her backpack. Her professor was looking at her expectantly and Jessie remembered she had been asked a question right before she left--what was it? Ah yes, yes, she answered, she did enjoy her vacation and was ready to go back to lab. The professor seemed relieved—maybe Jessie wasn’t a completely vacant graduate student after all. 

Indeed, at the moment she was the opposite of vacant as all her gears churned. She had just, most likely, gone back in time, but she had to make sure. To test her hypothesis, Jessie quickly excused herself from the professor’s office and made her way down the school steps to the bus stop where she waited as patiently as possible for the next 10 minutes. The same student walked down the same path and asked the same question. Unwilling to break the chain of events that had led to her time-skip, she answered. Then, the old woman approached. “How long have you been waiting for the bus?” she asked, without a hint in her voice that this was the third iteration. Jessie took a deep breath and answered, “24 hours.”

She was at dinner with her other graduate school friends, bemoaning their last day of freedom. She listened carefully to the conversation. It was, without mistake, the same one they had the day before. Barely believing what was happening, she took out her phone and checked the time and date. It was 6pm the day before the school year officially started. Reeling from her discovery, she excused herself from dinner early and went home. The possibilities of what she could do with this time-skip ability, or circumstance, or whatever it could be called, was tremendous. What if, what if she could go back two years and choose a different life for herself coming out of college. So long as she made it back to that bus stop on that date at that time she would be able to try anything she wanted without fear of failure. She had thought about a career in music or theater—now she could try that for two years without repercussions. Or maybe spend a year making money and then another year traveling the world. Or she could even try to invent products that she knew became successful within that two-year period and go into business. The best part was that she could try all of those options and choose whichever one she liked best. She slept fitfully that night and decided not to go to class the next day—there was no time for that when planning the rest of her life was at stake. She got the bus stop thirty minutes early and awaited her future.

When the student came around the corner she could hardly contain her excitement as she quickly answered his question. The older woman approached her once again. “How long have you been waiting for the bus?” Jessie tried to still the quaver in her voice as she took the first step toward the best years of her life, “Two years” she answered, and waited for the time-skip.

 “That’s a long time,” the older woman said, looking at Jessie with sad eyes, “maybe you should stop waiting" and walked away.