I saved a life

Hold on to the thought of nominating me to some Nobel Prize category. I didn’t do anything spectacular. And some may even think that I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.

Last evening, I was returning by my company bus, as usual. The seat in front of mine was occupied by a girl, whom I assumed to be a fresher from college - one of the 880 that joined us last month.

We were all on the 2-seater side and luckily for her, she didn’t have to share her seat. She had pushed her window back quite a bit and I was actually contemplating about asking her to close it. Some 5 minutes after the bus started, she happily stretched herself around and in a matter of another 5 minutes, I saw something black tracing a slow arc from the middle of the seat towards the window. I was having a rear view of her head falling down while she slept.

By now her hair was flying all over the place and she didn’t budge. Sorry, she did budge, but towards the wrong direction. Her head basically started entering the space outside of the window.

I was scared a bit. Luckily, some jolt of the bus caused her to wake up and resume a more decent and less life threatening posture. This lasted for some 2 minutes and 24 seconds by which time, I once again witnessed a slow arc of black moving from seat to window. This time her head was a little more on the outside.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to warn her. But how do I do it? I thought of tapping her shoulder from between the window and the seat. But her sliding posture placed her shoulder at a much lower level. She didn’t have a neighbour to whom I could pass the message. Nor did I know anyone who would have known her.

After processing all this in a matter of 41 seconds, I decided to be bold. I placed my left hand near her head and tried to push her inside. Alas, either the strength of my left hand wasn’t that good or she had too much head weight (sic), but the net result was just status quo.
I then decided to take things to the next step. I started tapping her head in the hope that unnecessary vibrations to one's skull would pass some extra current around the neurons and tell the brain to come out of auto-pilot mode. But this girl was one tough cookie. She was completely unperturbed by all my tapping and I had a bad feeling that perhaps she might be enjoying it.

Then another fear came to my mind. Just imagine someone sitting on my right side. All he would be able to see is me jutting my left hand out into an area where a passenger in front of me is!!! Lest he assume something bad and possibly initiate an Anti $exual Harassment case on me, I took my hand off and let the sleeping beauty continue her voyage in dreamland.

After what seemed like an eternity and was actually only 4 minutes and 29 seconds long, she finally did wake up. She took up a more socially acceptably seating posture. It was at this point that I did something I am really proud of.

I closed the window!

Yes, that’s what I did. Why? Now even when she literally 'falls asleep', she will only bang her head on the glass pane wake up and resume the cycle.

Now where was the whole thing about saving a life? Well, that came some 3-4 paragraphs above where I mentioned about holding her head and tapping it. The second instance was the closing of the window.

Depending on which side of the river you stand on, you may either nominate me for a President's medal of honor or complain that I $exually harassed a girl by touching her without her consent.