If this bus crashed?

What would happen if this bus crashed and everybody died?

Said a formal looking Asian guy to me on the bus today to Oakleigh from Springvale, and it got me thinking. What if?

What if, right then and there, the bus were to crash, or there was a gas leak in the engine, and all it took was a spark from a bad brake caliper to turn it into collateral damage on the corner of Springvale Road and Princes Highway?

And I'm right in the middle of it. And I ceased to breathe, ceased to think, ceased to function?

And it gets me thinking.

In my sixteen years of being alive, what have I got to show for it? What would the authority learn about me when they looked at my decaying body and my items? What would they find, what would they discover?

A Madman Samurai Champloo jacket.
A T-Bar shirt.
A pair of chinos.
Some run down Chuck Taylors.
Armani Glasses.

Look at him, what a depressing sight. Then they'd dig deeper, they'd search the contents of my pocket. A rarely used bank card, a driver's license, and some expired cards from arcade machines. Expired cards, is that all I've got to show for my sixteen years of existence? Am I the contents of my wallet? No, I am not, but hey, I'm not the World, to them, I am the contents of my wallet.

They'd look further at my possessions, they'd look into my bag, my coveted, yet cheaply made Calvin Klein bag, which probably has a street value of $10. A black pencil box, a folder with some working paper, a lecture book for Biology, a notebook, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Well it's not looking so bad now. A digital camera, with no memory card; how embarrassing.

So what am I then, a hypocrite, confused, a conformist? Signs would point to yes, wouldn't they? I mean, he's a slave to materials, yet he's reading Nietzsche. What gives? He's just another adolescent. I mean, who the hell carries a digital camera without any means of storing the photos taken? Why even take photos if you can't keep them.

Sixteen years alive, and nothing to show for it. Sixteen years spent trying to aim at a better future, sixteen years all working towards the hopes of living to be happy, or at least living in accordance to what society tells me will make me happy. But to think, that if my life was defined by my death, I'd have nothing to show for it. Nothing but sentiments anyway.

Sixteen entire years, that's 5843 days, or 140232 hours, 8413920 minutes, 504835200 seconds, and nothing to show for it except the contents of my wallet, the t-shirt on my torso, the verisimilitude of my not so verbose ramblings.

Isn't that something?