You've seen it when they're like this before. She's dressed reasonably nicely, late 30s, slightly tattered black pants and mildly soiled vest with a turquoise collared shirt underneath. Her eyes are lidded- you know, like Michael Caine in the '70s- and there's some sort of contraption in her hair, like a dreamcatcher. She stutters, doddering around on the sidewalk in circles, unfocused eyes staring nowhere. Crack cocaine. When she meanders onto the bus, she responds nicely to my "Hello there; how are you?" But the body starts to shut down after being awake three, four, maybe five days, as is clearly the case here. She sits down toward the front as her eyes go up into her head, out of sight, and she starts to come down off of it, her listless state muttering out a fraught, wordless chorus of labored breathing and half-formed syllables.

A heavily tattooed fellow in painting/construction clothes brings her to my attention, saying, "Yo, dawg, I think maybe this girl needs some help," and I turn around and ask her how it's going today.  "I'm fine I'm good," she says, and you can feel the herculean effort it takes for her to keep it together. "I'm just tired, I'm really tired." I give her a smile and say "that's okay, you and me both! I'm happy to call somebody, just let me know. I be happy to help out." She thanks me and settles back into herself, falling asleep to the rhythms of the coach.

Luckily most of us around her on the bus are familiar with what's happening, and we converse quietly amongst ourselves, giving her space to come down. "What this girl needs is a nap," a bus buddy of mine says, and thank goodness she's finally getting one. There's an aura of helpful caring amongst the passengers, where you sense they're ready to step in and offer help the moment this fragile situation breaks down. I let her hang around for the rest of the route (why sleep for 20 minutes when you could sleep for an hour?), and at the very last stop, at the bottom of Rainier Valley, she awakens to my voice ("Alright, we made it to the end,") and she's disoriented and scared, really scared.

I look into her large brown eyes and say "it's okay, it's okay," and she starts to breathe, repeating my words, slurring out, "everything gon' be okay," and her feet are too swollen to put her shoes on, something's wrong with her sleeve, her arm is stuck somehow, but it's okay. Eye contact. I tell her softly about how she's gonna be alright, to be safe tonight, and in her thanks there is a recognition; she used to be a little girl once, and that human spark glints in the light, cutting through the drugged out haze, the tics and slurs of years gone past. There's a good, kind human, buried in there somewhere. You can almost see it now- yes- there it is. She walked into the evening, feeling slightly better than she did before.

I'm doing the last trip on my 4, southbound at 5th and Broad, 15 minutes late, my follower (the next #4, that is) is 2 minutes or so behind me, just out of sight, and so I skip past 5th and Denny because these 2 skater kids are not at the stop yet, they're skating up and yelling and trying to make my bus but I figure the next bus will be there in just a moment. But the light at Denny is red, and they come up and one of the guys asks, "can we get on?" I open the doors and say hey. Guy One says, "Thanks. What is UP?" "Not a lot. How are you?" The second guy gets on and doesn't say anything- maybe he's out of breath. But something bad in me stirs, something about this eats at me, the lack of thankfulness, and in the moment I sharply say, "You're welcome!" as he walks to the back. He says over his shoulder, "thank you!" and I hear them muttering. Guy One says to Guy Two: "You shoulda said, 'fuck you' instead!"

I wonder if he's not so wrong.

They sit in the back and mutter some more, and I wonder why I snapped at them. I can see how they probably think of me. They're the only ones in the back lounge area. In the last forward-facing pair of seats is a dark-skinned man with long dreads and a huge white t-shirt and shorts, perhaps 35.  The fact that I snapped at those kids is bothering me. I made a mistake, I'm thinking. They're just kids. Why did I say that? "You're welcome??" Why did I need to say that, especially when I go around talking about good ways of interacting with people and mindsets and seeing everyone as a friend, et cetera?

There's maybe 10 other people on the bus. This nags at me. Third and Bell, first free stop. At 3rd and Virginia I decide I need to do something about it, this feeling that I did something wrong, to correct it if only for selfish reasons. I need to do something about it, to try, to try to wrestle the day back into the good day that it's been. I have to do it. I get out of the seat and start walking to the back, thinking, "I guess I'll find out in a couple seconds if what I'm about to do is a bad mistake." I go back there, feeling totally naked, and say,

"Hey, guys. I jus' wanna apologize for snapping at you back there. I realize I probably sounded like an asshole, I'm sorry."
"Aw man. It's cool. I mean, we weren't really at the stop yet."
"Yeah, I just, it's not you're fault. It's been a long day. Not your fault. Thanks guys."
"Yeah," they say, a little nonplussed.

As I turn to walk back to the front, of course everyone's been watching, and the guy with the huge t-shirt and dreads says, with awe in his voice, "you're a good man."

I say "Thanks man, I do what I can!"

Somehow, the acknowledgement from Dreads guy was like winning the Nobel Prize. The boys take the time to come up to the front door even though the back door is open. We exchange pleasantries as they walk out, and everything is back in it right place. Third and Pine.

There's a certain joy to conversing at the upper level of your vocabulary.  I'll jump at the chance to say something like "maybe when that supervisor's looking the other way we can 'surreptitiously' throw these doors open." I recall a passenger muttering, "surreptitiously??! That's a hell of a word for a bus driver to use...." Which lead me to say something about putting that college degree to practice, "hangin' on to those three syllable words," which in turn lead someone else to point out how many syllables surreptitiously is, which then led me to recite the counting person joke ("there's three kinds of people in the world- those who can count, and those who can't," etc). As far as words unexpected from the mouths of bus drivers, I'm reminded of a moment on the 43 in the U-District, at night, when somebody showed me their transfer, and I loudly exclaimed, "it's beautiful!!!" Causing someone to immediately say that they'd never heard a driver use that word before, "beautiful." I said, "what! Good thing you're on this bus!"

A scholarly gentleman got on the 7 (shattering all kinds of stereotypes as to what sort of people use that route) and we found ourselves talking about Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tennessee Williams within 5 minutes of saying hi to each other. I'd never met the guy before in my life. Shared interests, emanating right out of you, almost of their own will. One thing leading to another. I had started off by asking about his day, and he responded by telling me about his harmonica lessons, and in the space of ten minutes our conversation had swirled and eddied into its own living thing- Everett, Abraham Lincoln, wind instruments, Bob Dylan. Charles Schultz said that talking is what kids do; 'conversing,' on the other hand, is two adults building a third thing together, and when they finish and walk away from each other, they're both slightly different from before.

Having said all that, there are also those moments that exist outside of deep conversation or fancy vocabulary, and it's in these moments that the 7 excels. After all, when half or more of your bus doesn't speak your language (English & Korean), there isn't any other way. I continue to be surprised at the universality of the smile, instantly disarming a sullen thug or exhausted service worker. It passes through the boundaries laid down by centuries of language and culture, floating above ostracism and prejudicial thoughts, existing in a shared realm where the basic makes sense, and kind eyes can show themselves.

I was concentrating on the switches on southbound 3rd at Seneca, checking to make sure my trolley bus didn't get on the 2 wire, when I heard a loud sneeze somewhere behind me. I yelled out, "bless you!!!" And upon hearing another sneeze right after it, "bless you again!!" I then had a moment to glance in the mirror to see who it was, and an older southeast Asian woman smiled at me, the upward curve of her lips both sheepish and relaxed, made comfortable by kindness, and I smile back at her, thinking, 'can't really think of anywhere else I'd rather be right now.'

A note I wrote myself a little while ago- Yesterday I was doing the 49 in those neighborhoods north of Broadway at about 10am, and the light was so gentle, everything so calm but alive... I wondered if I was in heaven. Probably. I drove slower to savor the deep thrill, that feeling that you've been here before, or this reminds you of something of long ago, an earlier age, and you feel very present.

I just want to say thank you to everyone who came or planned to come to my showing. I'm always excited by who ends up coming to these sorts of things- there's your dear friends who you know will come, and there's people you invited but didn't expect to actually show- but here they are! They wanted to come, and did! I'm fascinated by the ways our lives intersect, the tumultuous paths the lines of our lives must take as they swim in and out of each other. If only there was a way to map it all.

Dan in the Wheelchair, going to Fred Hutch. A gentleman in his 50s, in generic office attire. This is on the 70. He wheels onto the lift to go down, and says, "What's you're name?" I told him, and he said, "I've been riding the bus for a long time." I was expecting him to say something about finding me unusually courteous or friendly. Instead he blurted out, after a pause, "You're the best-looking bus driver I've ever seen!" I thought to myself, oh dear. How does one respond to this? What are you supposed to say? It reminds me of another time when I was doing the 10, full house going up to the Hill, and a youngish black fellow up front kept saying, "man, you the most attractive-looking young-looking bus driver I ever seen." I didn't know if he meant that, of all the young bus drivers he's aware of, he found me the most appealing, or, of all the physically attractive drivers he knew, I was simply the youngest. I didn't press the issue. Sometimes you just don't wanna go there.

He's got sunglasses on, but they're the kind where you can still make out the eyes behind them. 55-60, Black American. I vaguely remember a jacket and cane, but more specifically remember a presence. He's at the front and we're talking about what, maybe the weather, maybe sports- it's the sound of the voices that matter more, the timbre of a friendly air being thrown back and forth, tossed into a friendly goodness. 6:40pm, at Harborview, and my buddy Greg gets on, thin, outgoing African American, also 55-60. They know each other. Greg stands at the front, joshing with his friend and me, and we're all of us talking and laughing and nodding, and laughing some more. It's the thrill of being accepted by a different generation- here I am, not even 30, this Asian youngster with glasses, but that doesn't matter- what we are is people, the three of us talking and laughing on an equal plane, aware and inclusive of each others' differences. Nobody trying to be like the others, or anything other than themselves. I look up in the mirror and I see a passenger sitting back there- a commuter in a suit- and he's smiling at us all, excited by this, of something new and good. You get the sense that this joyful equal plane, this warm envelope, was new to him. Greg, standing at the front of the aisle, busting out laughing with that smile he has. I see Greg looking at his friend, happy to see him. I always say to Greg, "Good to see ya!" And Greg always responds with, "Great to be seen!"

I'm all done for the day, back at the base, driving my car out the garage. There's a lady out there, and she's blowing bubbles and spinning in a circle, bubbles all around her, on the sidewalk by an empty 545. From a distance she looked 10, perhaps 12 years old. I kept looking and maybe she was 12, maybe she was 60. I couldn't tell. Rolling down the window as I got closer, and oh! She is about 60, but the thought flashes- how could that be? She's blowing bubbles! I say loudly, "that's beautiful!" In the moment right before yelling I wondered if I should even say anything- maybe she wouldn't hear me? Or wouldn't get that I was talking to her? Or think it was weird I would yell out at her from my car- but no. She smiles back saying, "Thank you!" As if, you know, people yell friendly things across the street at each other all the time. In my rear-view I see her out there, still twirling in a sea of gently floating bubbles, glinting in the fading light- she still looks about 12. It's warm outside, as I head for the highway overpass. Orange sunlight passing underneath.