I was rid­ing the bus the oth­er day, and a woman got on and sat in a per­pen­dic­u­lar seat in front of me. She wore plain mary-janes, thick wool stock­ings, a con­ser­v­a­tive plaid skirt, and had her hair in a slight­ly orna­ment­ed pony-tail. I assume that she was in her late twen­ties, but her demeanour was almost child-like. She sat for a while, star­ing at noth­ing, car­ry­ing a per­pet­u­al­ly inno­cent, apolo­getic expres­sion on her face, as if she had a tir­ing day and was pen­i­tent to those around her for being in such an exhaust­ed state.

Sticking out of her bag was a sim­ple, white, let­ter-sized book­let with the head­ing “DEMOCRACY IN ACTION PROGRAM”, and I thought it was odd that a par­lia­men­tary event being held in the cap­i­tal of Canada would use the American spelling of the word “pro­gramme”.

Soon, she pulled out a set of plas­tic, bulky Sony head­phones (the ones with the over­sized foam that actu­al­ly come with a music device), and searched her bag for the tape play­er attached at the end of the cord. Now, I admit that I’m already gen­er­al­ly attract­ed to old­er, home­ly look­ing women, but it was the fact that she had such a pure look of sim­ple bliss on her face when she put on the head­phones, as if she was wait­ing all day to lis­ten to her music, that I found most attrac­tive.