BUS STORY # 443 (Making Out 21st Century Style)

"Kiss and Ride," © All Rights Reserved, by rudi_valtiner.

At first, I think it’s a mother and son sitting up front on the bench seat across from the driver.

They seem awfully close for a kid his age which looks to me like junior high. But when he leans in and kisses her on the mouth, I take a closer look.

He’s got one leg thrown over hers, and she’s running her fingers over his knee.

Not mom.

Not mom, but definitely more physically developed than him. But at that stage of life, they could very well be classmates.

He leans in for another kiss. They don’t get all twisted up with it, and half a minute later they’re apart and he’s scrolling through his smart phone.

A few minutes later, he puts the phone in his lap and leans in for another long kiss, then back to his phone. I watch this pattern repeat itself until a wheelchair boarder displaces them to the back of the bus.

Kids making out on the bus. I dispense with the socially calibrated conventions of “inappropriate PDA” and “babies making babies” before getting down to what I am really thinking.

I couldn’t have kissed a girl like that when I was that age. Of course, maybe if there had been any girls who had invited me to kiss them like that... But even if I got up the nerve, I certainly wouldn’t have been kissing anyone right there in public, on a city bus, up front where everyone was watching! Although I do recall the common sense-obliterating confluence of young desire and opportunity...

But if by some miracle I’d been granted the opportunity and seized it, I know I wouldn’t have interrupted things to scroll through my smart phone!

OK, yes, there weren’t any smart phones in my day. And I know there are a million stories offering testimony for just how incredibly attached people are to their phones despite whatever is going on right in front of them. But, c’mon! Kissing?! At that age? Somebody could’ve stolen that smart phone right out of my hands and there’s no telling how long it would’ve taken before I realized it was missing.

I am old, I am old. I cannot imagine a smart phone distracting me away from kissing a girl, especially when kissing girls is new. I am from another time.

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The photo at the top of this story is titled “Kiss and Ride,” © All Rights Reserved, and is posted with the permission of rudi_valtiner. You can see all rudi_valtiner’s photos on Flickr here.