I shouldn’t have laughed, really. Hav­ing said that, it was too damn funny, in a mildly depress­ing way.

Stock Nokia ring­tone. Pub­lic trans­port. Two peo­ple, same phone, less than three meters apart, one sit­ing as the other stands.

One rings. Two women dive, arm first, into the undis­closed depths of a bag, search­ing, reach­ing, the urgency of the task upon them. Both con­tinue dig­ging for what seems an eter­nity; a col­lec­tive antic­i­pa­tion fills the bus, an await­ing of the inevitable, one way or another, when the phone ceases to ring. Both women, search­ing, con­vinced it is their phone, their ring tone.

Even­tu­ally, of course, it is found. With a “Hello?”, the search is over. Greeted by a friend, or left star­ing into the depths of a bag, from which the phone now emerges for no pur­pose. Antic­i­pa­tion over, my atten­tion is diverted, as is the case for the rest of the bus — the sit­u­a­tion, in my mind, finds (or per­haps instills) some degree of humour.