Photo by Julie Michelle
Ed. Note: Julie Michelle of the wonderful I Live Here:SF sent us this story of a heartbreaking encounter on the T. Sometimes — a lot of times — we pass by people down on their luck on the street or on Muni, and there seems to be so little we can do to help. But when a fellow passenger asked Julie to talk for a minute, Julie decided that she can do more for this woman than to simply listen.
“Do you mind if I just talk to you for a minute?” the woman sitting next to me on the T said today.
We had been sitting next to each other for several minutes before she spoke, but it took only seconds after I chose the seat next to her that I realized she was crying. I could have sat in another part of the train, but it was raining when I got on at Third and Jerrold, and her seat was the closest to the door so I grabbed it. After I noticed her crying next to me, I thought perhaps that I should move to another seat and let her have her privacy, but then I also didn’t want to move, thinking that would make her feel exposed.
Outwardly I did what most of us do when faced with a stranger’s sadness: I looked out the window.
Inwardly, I wanted to put my arm around her. I was so sorry I didn’t have a Kleenex to give her.
She pulled a 2×3 photo of two children out of her purse. That made her cry again. Then she took some official looking papers out of a wet manila envelope and started to look through them. Despite my best efforts not to look at the papers, I couldn’t help catching a glimpse or two. The paperwork looked like some sort of application for emergency financial aid. The woman put the The woman put the papers back in the wet envelope.
The train kept moving, stop to stop. Slowly. Leaving Bayview, now entering Dogpatch.
“Can you tell me what time it is?” she asked me. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and told her it was 12:30. Then she added: “Do you mind if I just talk to you for a minute?”
She said it so quietly I almost didn’t make out the entire sentence.
“Of course you can,” I said.
Read the rest of the story on Julie’s blog.
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It might be just me, but I click over to the blog, the comments on the article are overlayed by the article itself about a quarter of the way down the page, so I can’t finish reading this. :/
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jeff Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
It works just fine for me. OS X 10.5.8, Chrome 5.0.375.
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Bless you for your kindness. I was starting to get disheartened by the people here complaining about busdrivers and also out there with the attitude so prevalent today of me,me,me-what is in it for me and people don’t care about other people anymore it seems. There is a lack of common courtesy these days. I believe in random acts of kindness which I believe what you put out there in the universe comes back to you.You were someone’s angel that day. I remember recently one day this elderly lady with a cane getting on the bus and there were no seats. There were even men and young adults-I got up and gave my seat to her(I even give it to pregnant women knowing how hard it is)-and not one other person offered her a seat. I think it is a shame. So you give me hope again-thank you.
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