A young girl was being berated by an older woman on the bus—her parents insulted—and then something surprising happened.
I was traveling home from work late at night, exhausted. The bus was dimly lit, and most passengers sat quietly, staring at their phones. In the back, a young girl with a large backpack, messy hair, and a phone was asleep, head slumped back, mouth ajar.
Suddenly, an older woman approached her and began muttering. The girl stayed asleep. Then the woman started shouting and grabbed at her hair:
“Have you no respect for your elders?” she bellowed for everyone to hear.
Groggy, the girl blinked awake, glanced around, then spoke softly, “You only had to ask.”
The bus fell quiet; her calm reply must’ve come off as meek to the older woman.
“How rude! Your parents obviously raised you poorly!” she snapped.
The girl stayed still, looking at the woman, and quietly said, “You had no right to touch me. If you’d asked politely, I would have given you my seat. But instead, you yelled and insulted me.”
The older woman grew angrier and started attacking the girl’s parents, calling them negligent and ill-bred.
Then the girl did something unexpected: she deliberately took out her water bottle and poured it over the older woman.
“Don’t talk about my parents,” she said softly, but firmly—just loud enough for everyone to hear.
The older woman was drenched, makeup running down her face. Passengers gasped; some whispered, “Wow,” others laughed awkwardly.
A man behind muttered, “Well, that’s enough.” Others added:
“She was just dozing off.”
“What does it have to do with her parents?”
Shocked, the woman sank down. The girl calmly zipped up her rucksack. “I would’ve given up my seat—nobody was kind to me,” she continued, then stepped off at the next stop.
A heavy silence filled the bus. No one knew whose side to take. Quietly, people wondered, “What would I have done?”
The woman dabbed her face with a tissue—whether she was grieving, unseen, or just snap-happy, no one could tell.
Even the driver, turning around, sighed, “One more scene like that and I’m kicking people off. I’m more tired of life than anyone here.”
He asked, pointedly: “Whose side would you be on if that happened to you?”
