The Kindness of Strangers

So the Husband had a meeting in Raleigh yesterday. I mention this because we only have the one car and usually he chauffeurs me around like the Princess that I am (not really, but a girl can pretend, yes?). The meeting necessitated me taking the bus home from work.

I have lived and worked and gone to school in Seattle. I have ridden public transit with some CRAZY people. One time a guy got on our bus and was promptly followed by two other people who were on the phone with the cops because the first guy had just broken into a car and stolen some stuff. He got off the bus and took off running. Another time we were actually shot at. I have seen most everything, drunks, junkies, hippies, old people, immigrants, and transients. It takes a lot to phase me and I'm fairly jaded. So, with that in mind I picked up a bus at 4:15 on Tuesday evening.

Now. I should admit that I was lazy and didn't check the schedule on-line. I knew I needed either the 412 or the 413 and that possibly both would get me to my apartment so I was lazy. I admit it. And the 412 got there before the 413 so I did the responsible thing and asked the driver if he would stop on the street near my apartment complex. He said, "Yes, sure, get on." So, I trundled aboard, swiped my bus pass and took a seat.

After about 20 minutes, flying past the street I had named and getting on to the freeway, I realized that maybe it was the 413 that I really wanted. I live about 10 miles from where I work. It generally takes 15-20 minutes to drive there. 30 minutes later! I mosey up to the driver and apologize and say perhaps I'm on the wrong bus, and my jaded self fully expected an eye-roll, a sigh, a "Hey, STUPID! Check the schedule next time."

What I got instead: Lovely driver chuckles and says, "Honey, if you'd taken the 413 you'd have been home already, but I'm going there now, you just sit tight and I'll make sure you get home."

I routinely wonder why I am blessed by encountering these strangers who are so unimaginably kind, who act with genuine grace and who fully restore all my lost and beaten down faith in the goodness of humanity.

The driver started chatting with me and we had this lovely conversation about places we've been and things we've seen and places we'd like to go. He was well-traveled and kind and wonderfully articulate. When the lovely Chinese woman stepped on to the bus he got up and bowed and greeted her in Cantonese. He knew most of his regular riders by name and where they were going. He knew all of the routes and regularly picked up the radio to give another driver directions. He spent 10 minutes at a stop explaining to a lovely lost South Asian how to get where he needed to go in order to get back to Chapel Hill later on. And he made sure that I found my stop.

It took me 2 hours to go 10 miles down the road, but I wouldn't have traded it for the shorter commute.