"You know what it smelled like, it smelled like those stink bombs kids use. It smelled like that."
I said, "those are terrible!" 

Sometimes the conversations are deep, and sometimes they aren't. One of my closest friends, Brian, is a published author, used to teach at Harvard, gives lectures at writer's conferences around the country, currently teaches Latin and more; but what impresses me more than all those things is how he never lets his considerable accomplishments or education separate him from being excited to relate to just about anyone. I recall a moment when a mutual friend, not as highly schooled, was telling him an anecdote where someone was running, but their jeans were sagging down to their ankles.

"Oh, so he wasn't able to run very fast," Brian said.

I doubt he remembers this moment. It was there and gone in a flash. But I traffic in the details, as you know. He was so present, so genuinely interested, despite the decidedly non-vital nature of the conversation. He is the rare individual who just doesn't judge, and looks forward to hearing from all walks of existence. You get more out of life when you're curious. The moment we think we know everything, we stop paying attention, and it's not a stretch to say we then give up on living, and lose the ability to experience wonder.

Plus, you never quite know where the conversations will turn. We're all more alike than we aren't.

"You know, where you throw them?" says my latest conversation partner. We're turning into the 7 from the 49 route, drifting down Pine Street. "My nephew has those. I live with him and his mom right now, and he'll just, one day he threw one behind my shirt, came up behind me and,"
"And those take forever to get out,"
"Yeah, he doesn't care. He stuffed it behind my shirt, and I smelled like aw, man. It was the worst thing. Ah said you cain't do that."
"Yeah! Not allowed!"

He's in ordinary black sweats and well-used walking shoes, thirties, just this side of grungy today, with a comb stuck fashionably in his 'fro. Seated nearby is a refined-looking woman, listening in silence, and I can't tell if her silence is amenable or frosty, but I'm not going to let that stymie this really enjoyable conversation. I don't know how we got to this subject. He speaks in a reasonable tone, which, when paired with stink bombs, I find both amusing and endearing. As in, I can see it's serious because it's happening to him, but I can't help but smile, and sometimes neither can he.

"He's got this other one that smells like cow manure. It's a spray."
"Oh my goodness. Cow manure? Where does he get this stuff?"
"I think he gets them online."
"Cow manure,"
"He'll be sprayin' this stuff all around the house. He doesn't care."
"I'm sure his mom's thrilled. How old is he?"
"Eighteen."
"Oh my goodness! Old enough to know better! And plus, who manufactures spray bottles of cow manure?"

Is that the refined woman chuckling to herself? I think it is!

"We were walkin' around Lowes," he's saying.
"Anything for a buck, I guess."
"We were walking around Lowes, and he's goin' around sprayin' stuff!"
"What? Oh, no. No." 
"I had to call the cops on him."
"That's gettin' outta hand!"
"I hate to call the,"
"Sometimes you gotta do it. Sometimes,"
"I mean, I hate to call the cops on my own family,"
"But if he's bein' that way... Lowes? I can't believe it! Who is this guy?"
"He doesn't care. Him and his brother, they just don't care."
"No empathy!"
"They just lie around,"
"Okay, so what'd the cops say?"
"They said that's assault."
"Yeah!"
"'Cause I told him, what if he sprays somebody, and then that guy goes to work and gets fired from his job?"
"Exactly. Exactly. People can't be sprayin' people with cow manure. That's bad manners."
"I hate to call the cops on my own family,"
"But you know, I'm glad you did. 'Cause hopefully it was a wake up call. Sometimes a person needs that, something big like that to really get up and pay attention." 
"And now he's changing, starting to change. But I'm like you shoulda been changed a long time ago,"
"Well, it's never too late, right?"
"It's never too late!"

The quiet woman gets off, smiling to herself, bidding us farewell. Her silence was definitely of the amenable variety!

I'm on Paul's bus. Friends ride other friends' buses, and it's Paul's last night on the 7, ever, before going into supervision. I had ridden a quick loop already, but in light of the finality of this night, I decided to hang around a little longer. You're going to laugh, but I have to be honest: I was actually already driving home when a thought occurred to me. Why am I going home? What am I going home to do now that's more valuable than spending time with my good friend, on the last night of his driving our favorite route? What carries more meaning for me besides human connection?

Nothing, that's what. I turned around and found him again, leaped out of my car and back on board. We cackled with delight at the ridiculous brilliance of it all. Both of us are very busy people. What with my endless cavalcade of art projects, and his as well, we don't see each other nearly as often as I'd like, and the idea of spending my off day riding the 7 for eight hours quickly went from an absurd notion to an entirely and gleefully justifiable matter. Part of this involved me jumping out a couple times and driving my car to a new parking space further ahead on the route, before jumping on again, something we both found highly amusing. 

All of which is to say, yeah, we go there. Time is valuable, and it's ticking away. Why not spend it on what we value most?

Now we're at Graham Street, having a terrific time, chatting the night away, holding for time here, catching up to schedule.

From behind us, in the first set of forward-facing seats, a woman's voice yells, "hello, it's a green light! You can go now!"
Paul replies calmly. "Oh, we're just a little bit early. We're gonna wait here about twenty seconds." 

Details matter. I've learned more from riding Paul and Brian Jobe's buses than I can possibly express. His starting with "oh" sets the whole sentence as non-confrontational, and reinforces his friendly tone.
I turn to her and add in jest, "drivin' too fast!"
"When you're a real bus driver, come talk to me."

I look at her and then turn to Paul, saying, "that must have made the videos all the more interesting, the fact that they were lo-fi." We're continuing a discussion about electronic harp performances on YouTube. Don't ask me how we got to that. I want to steer him attention away from her negative energy, though he isn't the sort to be swayed by such things.

During a lull in our conversation, I hear her voice again in my periphery: "Hey. I'm sorry. I was rude. I'm sorry."
She didn't rush the words out. You can tell she'd been stewing on it a while.
"Oh, it's all cool," I say.
"I'm sorry."
"Thank you. I appreciate you sayin' that."
"That was rude of me." She's really processing this.
"How's your night goin'?"
"Not good."
"I'm sorry. I appreciate the truthful answer, but I'm sorry!" That's becoming a go-to line of mine. "You goin' home?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Good. That's always a good feeling, walkin' through the door, you finally made it home."
"I'm searchin' for my man."
"Uh-oh!"
"That's why I was rude."
"I hope he hasn't been givin' you a hard time!"
"That's why. I shouldn'a done that," she says, looking down with shaking head, in a voice threatening to crack. She's really letting herself feel it, and the regret is palpable. It's as if we've traded places: she started by trying to make me feel better, and now the reverse seems to be the case.

"Hope he hasn't been givin' you trouble," I continue.
"I'm sorry. That was mean." More to herself, she adds in reflection, "it's not good to be mean."
"Oh, it's all cool. I can see you're a nice person."
"That was rude. That was rude." 
"Oh, it's no problem."
"You guys are just bein' nice...." She looks at me, at Paul and I, with tears welling up. Wavering, that space where emotion is louder than volume: "you're gonna be... you're cool. And he's cool too." 
"You're awesome. Thank you."

It's her stop now, and she walks toward me. "I'm sorry." In a half laugh, half breaking cry, all at once frustrated with herself and deeply thankful for the forgiving space we've made, she says, "you guys are gonna make me cry! Can I...."

A real, tight hug. She hugs both of us. You know the difference between a perfunctory hug and a real one, where two fellow beings grasp each other and themselves, no longer strangers, deriving something tangible from the proximity, the gesture of love, their shoulder blades, the small of their back familiar, reminding you how alike we all are.

After she left, I exclaimed to Paul, "That was beautiful. Oh my goodness, that was great!" 
He mentions how if I hadn't chosen to stick around, I would've completely missed out on the experience. How right he is. 
"Oh, that was lovely." I grab the nearest piece of scrap paper, a Fare Alert brochure. "Hang on, I gotta write this down!"

A twenty-something couple approaches the front, late at night at Othello Street. They're about to deboard.
"Um," says the girl. "Hey, can we ask you a,"
"Are you gonna ask how old I am? Every one asks that."
"Haha, well, you do look really young. No, we wanted to ask, how are you so happy all the time? 'Cause every time we get on you're always in such a,"
"I don't know! That's a great question, I,"
"-Sure you don't need a pee test?" the boy asks.
Cackles of laughter all around.

"I don't know what it is," I continue. "'Cause I've thought about that a lot, you know. A lot of people ask me, but I feel like if I was to discover what it was, it would vanish, like a whisper, you know? Like it's some magic secret thing and it would go out like a candle."
"I got choo. Yeah."
"I think it's just, i really like the people, being nice to the people, something... they give me energy. The people give me energy."
"That's so great."
"I love being nice to the people."
"That's great," she says. "Especially on this route, which is not always, uh,"
"Oh, it's an adventure! And I looooove it!"

We laughed in each other's gleaming faces, sharing in the buzz of my euphoria. They could see I meant my words. I didn't make clear enough in the post below that I happen to really like these people. As I recently told another operator, I choose to drive the 7, the 358 and others not because they're the most dangerous routes, or the "most coolest," but because the passengers are the folks I genuinely most want to spend time with when I'm at work. 

I don't mean to ignore that some of them, like you and I, make ugly and terrible decisions, but here more than elsewhere I feel loved. Gestures of kindness echo with greater resonance. I learn from them, about compassion, appreciation, perspective, actions and consequences. Lessons are stronger at the leading edge of life, on ground level, where things are played out in a high key. These two instinctively got all this, without my having to mention it, let alone try to explain it. They knew, as I continued by describing the 7 as "freaking awesome," that the silliness in my exuberance was borne of something deeply rooted, something they knew the language of too. Who besides us actually likes this stuff, being out here in this crazy maelstrom, riding high on the everlasting wave?

Note: the links at right have been revamped, with a few more easily accessible popular stories which longtime readers will recognize (share them with your friends!), as well as consolidated links to some of the film reviews, and the explanatory trolley post. 

Rainier and Othello is not an inviting place. You know the landscape: one and two story buildings, mostly residential, with buckling and otherwise eroded and collapsing sidewalks. There's the auto parts store, with the owner standing just inside the doorway with his hands on his hips, shaking his head from who knows how many robberies; the Western Union exchange across the way; a Mexican restaurant on the southeast block, seemingly closed more often than open. Iron bars cover the windows of all these establishments and the homes behind them. 

Then we have the famous Valero Gas Station (yes, capitalization is necessary), dominating the landscape on the southwest corner. In the same way the Morrison Hotel downtown isn't the Morrison without an ambulance parked out front, so too is the Valero Gas Station not the Valero without a crowd of guys and gals loitering in, on and around. There are men who more or less live here, dealing, fighting, drinking, and shooting their way through life in a manner far riskier than necessary. Tricked-out classic Oldsmobiles and American muscle cars roar into the lot, throaty and gleaming and oversized, trading people or goods with dilapidated Camrys and unwashed, decade-old Lexuses. Occasionally the folks residing will get on the bus, but generally most don't, preferring to finish their beer or light another joint, wait for a delivery, or continue a conversation or argument. The fluorescents of the gas station behind only dimly illuminate them as silhouettes in the darkened bus shelter, looming and receding in size, expansive figures in puffy jackets and sagging jeans, shuffling amongst a patina of litter their own in the making.

There are also regular working-class folk who use this stop to go home, and they leave the zone quickly, keeping their head down and walking in a path determined, away from this mass of unpredictability. There's a regular lady who asks to be let off thirty feet past the bus stop, and that short distance can be the difference between life and something ugly. These are places where a little bit of help can be significant.

Leroy was on the bus one evening, out for a ride, just to talk. A thought occurred to me as we pulled up to the great Valero.
"Hey, you wanna know something kinda crazy?"
"Wha's that?"
"So you see this bus stop right here, how it always looks really, super sketch."
"It looks fuckin' terrible."
"Yeah, every time we come through here,"
"It looks fuckin' awful."
"It reminds me of being in South Central."
"I know, it's like Philly."
"It looks like a disaster."
"Yeah."
"And I used to drive up to that stop feelin' kinda apprehensive, a little bit nervous, you know?"
"Oh yeah!"
"But, the crazy thing is, and I just realized this recently. So I've been driving number 7 through here since 2009. But check this out. The crazy thing is, man, in all that time, I've never once had a single problem at this intersection."
"You serious?"
"Yeah, can you believe that? Look at this place. The whole time, every time I've ever rolled through here, never had a single problem with any of these dudes. It always, everything always just works out. They get on, I say hey. Can you believe that?"
"Uh. No!"
"I know, it's amazing!"
"Wow! Damn. Well, that's cool!"
"So, yeah. Go figure!"

I don't think it's possible to overstate how powerful kindness is. In a phrase or evanescent gesture you send so many messages– esteem, consideration, tolerance, appreciation, and the egalitarian, loving belief that we both have a place here, despite our significant differences... I've heard tell of some of the things that happen at this intersection, and seen their aftermath. 

But somehow, this 7 has so far averted the disasters here. I greet them all as if they're friends of mine, and since I've been part of the neighborhood for so long, many of us really are friends, and they jump on happy to see me. The folks treat me as they are treated, and as the days turn to years we accumulate our mutual good works, dignity seeping through the cracks as grains of sand, something besides weeds buckling through that asphalt, our well-wishes and roundhouse waves building to a new kind of normal.

Note: follow-up to this post in partial response to the comments below, here.

[This story is now available in my new book.]