Please comment on my essay and do not hesitate to post constructive/brutal criticism, especially on cliche, clearness, and construction.
<hr>
The familiar mechanical tremors swept over my body. Again in the 811 bus, I was heading toward my volunteer place, the American Red Cross, Mountain Valley Chapter. I looked at the vacant seat across me, and I giggledalmost hammered my head from irrepressible gaiety. Half laughing, I looked at my watch. 2:40pm. I still had about 20 minutes to go.
Two hours earlier, I was tightening my backpack close to my shoulders and rushing toward a nearby bus station from school, while my friends were busy planning for afternoon funs. School was out at 12:30pm and the next bus was scheduled at 12:40pm; I had to hurry. Perhaps I could ask a friend to give me a ride to the bus station, but I always insisted on running. I liked to resonate my short breaths with my hasty steps, watching mountains reflected on a lake. Even more, the chill air of early spring enthralled me.
On boarding, I took out a bus coin along with todays vocabulary list; it became an inveterate habit for me to enlarge the vocabulary of a new language. Todays list was from V to Z, which I had gone over numerous times in the past two years here in America. Vanguard waggish zeal. When I finished, I looked at my watch. 1:20pm. It was about time. At the next stop, a stout male Caucasian with sunglasses and a blue hoodthe same attire as last week, the week before, and two weeks beforerebelliously stepped in. Gnashing his teeth at the passengers, he sat across me, his usual seat. I could see other passengers turn seemingly to protect themselves. To tell the truth, this was now a mundane scene for me; I had observed him swinging his fists and swearing at people many times before. However, they restrained from calling the authorities because of his odd accents and strides that indicated his mental handicap.
While most looked at him with condescending pity, contemptible jeer, or convenient indifference, the bus driver convivially offered salutation to him. As usual, they talked about the weather and eccentric people.
During this situation, I was deeply emerged in contemplation. Am I among the passengers who look down upon him or am I like the bus driver? I was not alien from the handicapped; in fact, I even devoted my summers to them in a special facility in Korea. Every other morning, I ran or rode bicycles to a subway station to go to the facility, feeling the palpable humidity and memorizing the usual vocabulary. Once I arrived there, I pulled out a language book and taught Korean alphabets to the children and adults. While I was teaching, they frequently held my hands as if they were ensuring that I was there, visible and tangible. Feeling their hesitant hands, afraid of things outside their world, I squeezed them and amply gave the warmth of a stranger.
Questioning all my devotion and compassion for the handicapped, the intractable man did not allow me to approachrather, I could not avail myself to him. It was as if I were a complete stranger in an unfamiliar place, afraid of touching anything.
Suddenly, an exuberant face of my friend flashed in my mind. About twenty-three years old, he was my best friend in the facility I worked. When I first met him, I was not even included in his world. But as I gradually disclosed myself to him, remind him of how my laughter sounded like, and touched his sensibility through communication, he responded with the world he had kept from me. And I became a firm constituent in his world, in which I gently provided with fresh breeze.
His sparkling face reminded me of the man sitting in front of me. Objectively, there was a sole similarity between them: both were mentally handicapped. Besides that, one was an Asian, and the other Caucasian. One never wore any type of glasses, but the other always covered his face with sunglasses. One was smiling, while the other was growling.
<h2>I remembered; simple words had mysterious chords that elicited ones hidden world. I saw myself reflected on his sunglasses; I was smiling, and was boldly but gently stepping into a new, exotic world.</h2>