The Bus Ticket I Keep Folding
Most people tap in and forget. I still take a paper ticket on Route 945 some mornings, fold it twice, and keep it in my wallet until the creases go soft. It is a small ritual I have never explained to anyone until now.
Route 945 takes me from Bukit Batok West toward the industrial edges and back again when I miss my stop out of habit. I know the bends — where the bus sighs over the speed bump, where the auntie with the red trolley always boards, where the secondary school boys occupy the back row with headphones loud enough to leak.
I started keeping tickets during a month when my father was in hospital. Digital records felt too clean for days that were not clean. A paper ticket had weight. You could tear it, lose it, find it again in the laundry. It was proof of movement when everything else felt stalled.
He recovered. The habit stayed. Every few days I take one ticket from the machine though I also use EZ-Link. I fold it lengthwise, then across, then slide it behind my NRIC. The fold pattern is consistent — same pressure at the corners, same tuck. My wallet knows the shape now.
A crease is a record of repetition. The paper remembers how your hands work.
Last Saturday I emptied my wallet to change to a new one and found eleven folded tickets from March and April. Different dates, same route, same seat preference when available — left side, one row behind the exit. I laid them on the table like a timeline no one else would recognise.
My niece asked why I kept trash. I said it was not trash; it was a map of mornings. She looked bored, which is fair. Rituals sound strange when you describe them out loud. They only make sense inside the person who performs them.
The driver on the 7.15am trip nodding once when I board — that is part of the ritual too. He does not know about the tickets. He knows my face. After two years on the same schedule, recognition becomes its own kind of ticket.
I will stop keeping them one day, probably without announcing it. The wallet will slim down. The trace will move from paper to something less tactile — maybe these written entries, maybe nothing. Until then, I fold, ride, fold again. A small private mark of having gone somewhere on time.
Last week the ticket printed a smudged date I could barely read. I kept it anyway. Imperfect ink still counts as proof. The route does not require perfection — only that you boarded, sat down, and let the city carry you one more morning.
My father asked once why I do not just use the app. I told him some habits are not about convenience. They are about leaving a physical line behind you in the world, thin as it is.