Thursday 21 August 2008

There's hope for Humanity yet...

I saw something lovely today. I arrived early at Southern Cross stn for once and so had no real need to race over the concourse to catch my connection, but was doing so out of habit, when the fire alarms went off... very loudly. I'm not actually sure they were fire alarms as I didn't see any fireies or any other EM units around and everyone ignored the sounds as far as I could tell... so, there was some very loud whooping sounds of unknown purpose echoing throughout the station deafening everyone.

In my no-need-to-hurry-hurry, I got stuck on the escalators behind a school kid by his bag - always annoying - but I decided not to push the issue so I just hopped from foot to foot behind him hoping he would notice I was there. There are literally hundreds of school kids on the route I take, wearing a variety of uniforms, with only one uniform characteristic that I can tell - they're all more formal than my school uniform ever was. Blazers and ties for the main part - toff schools in other words. I've made a bit of a game of the uniforms - I keep trying to guess where they're from. So far I only recognise Xavier, MLC and Kew Grammar on sight. I've not discovered who the olive and yellow nor the blue on blue uniforms belong to. And I'd love to know the boys' school that sports the very garish blue, green and yellow stripped jersey - it's so very colourful it's an eyesore!

Anyway, halfway down the escalator and I'm thinking of pushing past this particular school kid, and trying to work out what school he came from at the same time, when he decides to take a flying leap from dead stationary to a full out run down to the platform like his pants were on fire. Well, that vaguely caught my attention, so I watched him, and what do you know? The boy was rushing onto the platform to help a blind man, who looked awfully confused, whilst his dog was hunched up at his feet with an expression of pain clearly not liking the deafening whooping. Because of the noise the poor man couldn't hear the train announcements you see. The kid assured this guy that he hadn't missed his train and stayed by him until the right train came along - missing his own connection I believe as all the other uniforms like his got onto an earlier train - and then made sure the guy and his dog got on safely.

It made me feel very proud of the kid and very happy with humanity in general. Very nicely done!

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