If you've ever been on a bus, you know that you can see some of the most interesting things if you happen to have a keen interest in the field of behavioural science.
Manners, for instance, is one thing that always seems to surprise me. It just must not be taught to people anymore. We're going to have to bring out a video game where Halo's Spartan 117 teaches people how to not be rude..
A sense of self-importance and urgency goes in there too. The whole idea of "first come, first serve" or in this case "first come, first board" means a whole lot of nothing when you add in a pinch of "I've got somewhere to be and I'm going to relay my angst by how much shoving I do while I flare my nostrils."
This morning though, I saw a most curious thing. It's something I've never seen before and I'm still not entirely sure what it is.
As I got on a ridiculously late 380 to the Junction (over half an hour just to do by bus what I can walk in half the time) and sat near the back, I noticed a girl in the seat in front of me checking herself out using the front camera on her mobile phone.
My immediate thought was "oh, she's using it as a mirror to check her make-up" but that wasn't the case because…
…she never stopped.
"What do you mean she never stopped?" I hear you ask.
Well, to be as blunt as I can possibly be… she never stopped.
The young girl – possibly late-teens or early-twenties – in the blue dress with white polka dots never stopped looking at herself for longer than a few seconds.
She wasn't zooming in to check the blemishes nor was she doing any make-up.
She was studying her face, studying her expressions from different angles.
She would purse her lips, return to a straight face, smile, return to a straight face, and be quizzical while looking at herself in the landscape orientation of her phone's front camera.
And then she would move to the portrait mode and do it all again, studying her face and expressions more obsessively than anyone I've ever seen before.
I thought "vanity must be a bitch" but it felt more than just everyday simple narcissism. It was as if she was studying herself because she wanted to force or teach herself the perfect expressions. Like an actress might. Or a hopeful actress.
A song must have come up on her iPod that she didn't like because she pulled out her pink silicon sleeved taller iPod nano and flicked past a few songs, her Asian hands barely much larger than the mp3 player itself. Having found the song she wanted, she put the iPod away and started admiring herself again.
Thanks to the wonders of Bondi's Los Angeles-esque traffic patterns, we were on the bus for around 15-20 minutes and she did this the entire time.
A part of me wanted to poke her on the shoulder and ask "why?", a simple question that probably had no good answers. And then another part of me just wanted to follow her around for a day to see if she watched herself all day, straightening her glasses and pursing those lips.
But then I got off of the bus and she just became a most curious thing that would linger in the back of my mind.