Nighttime mirage

On one occasion, I had the opportunity to travel with some family members and friends to enjoy a vacation away from home. Since it was a trip of approximately 10 hours by bus, we decided to travel at night, which I have always considered the best time to travel, especially when it involves a long time on the road. In fact, it's worth mentioning that since I was a child, I always liked traveling at night and hardly slept, especially if I was sitting by the window so I could see some parts of the road, even though at times everything looked very dark.

Well, it turned out that I had to share the seats with one of my cousins, and this time she chose to sit by the window, which didn't bother me at all. At around 9:30 p.m., we were already on the bus, and just a few minutes before departure, I got hungry. I thought about it a lot, so when I tried to get off, it was too late because the bus was already starting to move. The problem was that eating was not allowed on the bus, and the first stop on the trip was about two hours away, so I had to find a way to eat something on the sly or resign myself to just enduring it.

As we left the terminal, the lights in the aisle were immediately turned off, and silence and darkness descended. Suddenly, I thought to ask my cousin if she had anything to eat in her handbag, and she whispered that she would check. Then, discreetly, she put her hand near mine and handed me a packet of cookies. I felt practically saved. So as not to attract attention, I had to open it very carefully and began to eat them slowly so as not to make any noise and arouse suspicion. I ate all the cookies in no time, but I didn't know where to put the wrapper. That's when I looked toward the front of the bus and saw someone staring at me.

"It looks like they saw me," I said to my cousin, and even though she didn't understand what I meant, she told me to stay calm. In the darkness, the silhouette of that person resembled a guard, and the more I looked at him, the more I felt that at any moment he would approach me to complain about my eating on the bus. Those two hours were the longest of the trip, and that soldier's silhouette kept watching me. I was so uneasy that I didn't even want us to get to the first stop quickly, but when I looked out the window, I realized we were already arriving. What happened when the bus stopped and they turned on the lights?

It turned out that the supposed silhouette wasn't a soldier or anyone else. It was a curtain that had been hung up! Without saying a word, all I could do was laugh. It was like a fit of laughter that I couldn't control. Neither my cousin nor the others understood why I was laughing, and just when I thought I could control myself enough to explain what had happened, I started laughing loudly again, practically crying from laughing so hard. I think it took me about 10 minutes to explain a little bit of what had happened to me, and I must say that I spent the rest of the trip talking and laughing to myself.

That was a totally unique experience, so much so that every time I remember it, I can't help but laugh. I couldn't believe how a curtain had fooled me for so long. After a lot of tension, things changed with a lot of grace and humor, and now every time I travel by bus, I automatically think of "the guard's story." That nighttime mirage played a dirty trick on me, giving rise to one of the funniest moments I've ever experienced in my entire life.

Here in Venezuela, it's 12:27 a.m., with a cold night and a starry sky 🌃🦉

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