Voices In High Tune

On my way to church with my twin daughters our bus stopped at the mall to pick up passengers. One by one they stepped onto the doorway. The last passenger who went in stopped to tell something to the driver. Her companions, a child and a young adult, went straight to the back. She was asking the driver to let her in without a fare card (that is, bus ticket) because she lost it in the mall.

Shortly after she finished her statements, the driver immediately said, "Ma'am, if you don't have a ticket, you need to exit the bus." The lady then repeated her story. This time with a little but higher tone.

Then it became a cycle. She talks. He talks back. It was like listening to a student of a music lessons repeatedly singing the same line of a song that gets higher everytime.

I felt the driver's urge to stop the argument when he said, "If you keep raising your voice, I will keep raising my voice. You don't have a ticket, you need to exit the bus."