Road Stories

Every so often, many of my thoughts on recent events align and have a certain theme. This is one of those moments.

1. Homeless guy
Yesterday I did something that I don't do very often. I gave a dollar to a guy on the street. If you'd like to know which guy exactly, read this post. This is the guy that got down ON HIS KNEE one time as I was passing by in my car. I see him at this corner all the time. I really have no idea what made me decide to give him money on this day and not on any of the other occasions I have passed him by, but whatever the reason, I did it. But that really isn't the interesting part of the story. The part that was interesting to me is what happened afterwards. Or rather, what didn't happen. So, I'm sitting at the red light fumbling with my purse looking for a dollar (change is just so insulting), he sees me and stops hopefully next to the car. I signal to him that I want to give him something, but meanwhile, the light turns green and the cars in front of me go through. I fumble a bit more, expecting the cars behind me to get restless, I eventually get the dollar, roll the window down, and hand it to him. So what was it that was so interesting to me? Nobody honked. Not one person behind me seemed to mind that I held up traffic for a good 10 seconds or more to give a dollar to a homeless guy. Is this really how people are?? If so, I love people.

2. Walking Man
On my way to work every morning I tend to see the same people over and over again. I don't know them, so I usually give them names like Bus Stop Guy or Big Hair Lady. There is one guy who I always see walking down the street in the opposite direction as me. Pretty much every morning. I can tell if I am running late or not by where along the road I see this Walking Man. I realized the other day just how much I really notice these familiar strangers when I saw Walking Man and thought to myself, "Oh look, Walking Man got a haircut."

3. Napkins
This actually happened almost 5 years ago, but the image has always just kinda stuck with me. I was driving into the city to go to my internship and it was very early in the morning. I can't be exactly sure what happened, but from what I could tell, a truck had dropped something from its load that had landed in the middle of the highway. As I got closer, I realized it was a large bundle of brown paper napkins. These napkins, however they had been packaged together, had come undone ... and they were everywhere ... blanketing the ground, floating up around all of the cars, spinning in circles as everyone rushed by on their way to work. And for some reason, I found this scene incredibly beautiful. They looked like swarms of giant butterflies and there were millions of them everywhere I looked. If anyone has seen American Beauty, it reminded me of the video of the plastic bag floating in the breeze ... one of those random, unexpected, incredibly breathtaking moments that can never be duplicated.

4. Driving Lady
Jillybean, DH and I were driving into the burbs for a get-together just last weekend, and I was sitting in the passengers seat. I normally don't make it a point to look into any of the other cars as they drive by, but as one particular car passed us, something caught my eye. I looked over to my right and the lady next to us was looking right into our car. She had been looking, then she looked back at the road, then turned and looked again. And she was smiling! Jillybean also noticed this the same time I did. I don't know what it was about this lady, I don't know what she was thinking about when she looked at us that made her smile, but I found it very touching. And then it made me smile. (Man, I can be really cheesy sometimes.)

5. The High Road
As a general comment, sometimes it really sucks to take the high road when all you want to do is pull someone's hair out. I wish it were socially acceptable to take the low road once in a while. Just sayin' is all.