If only...

So, yesterday I came out of the Metro and saw my bus in front of me. You might think, oh, perfect timing! The fates were with you! But...unfortunately, the door had closed, and the bus was moving away. I ran after it a little bit, but since the light in front of the station was green, not red, the bus kept going, and I thought it would be wisest for me not to try to stop an accelerating bus with my small wimpy self.

There's this sharp pang I get when I miss a bus like that. You'd think (I know, I keep telling you what you'd think when really, how would I know? I'll try to stop! Or not.) that missing a bus is missing a bus, whether it's by a couple seconds or by half an hour. Either way, you missed it and have to catch the next one. BUT IT'S NOT TRUE. There's a huge difference between getting to the bus stop just in time to see it drive away and getting to the bus stop, waiting a while and then realizing the bus must have left before you got there. It's like finding out your overall college GPA is .01 off an A (or B+). Or getting to the world championships and coming in second (okay, I don't know this personally, but maybe you do). Sometimes you'd rather be off by a lot than come really close only to lose at the end. I think it's because when you get that close, you've made it to the fuzzy edge of possibility, you can see inside, and then the way suddenly closes before you, leaving you stunned.

That's when you start thinking, if only I'd just left work a minute earlier; or, if only I'd just read one more Shakespeare play (um, yeah, I think I read only half of the 8 required plays in my Shakespeare class, but I read ALL 6 novels for my Jane Austen class the same semester); or, if only I'd stretched a little further and caught that ball. Or, if only I'd apologized to the girl in Junior High; or, if only I'd tried to contact that guy I liked. Barely missing the bus is so painful because the last remaining inches between you and the bus are measurable. And the smaller the increment, the greater the regret.

Postscript: Although I missed my preferred bus, the bus I was able to catch afterwards had plenty of room and got me home quickly. So it turned out to be a good experience in the end, and I got a rambling blog entry out of it.