good deeds

I had one done for me today.

I was across the street from my bus stop, unable to cross because the light was against me and there was lots of early morning rush hour traffic, when the bus came down the street. The bus driver saw me and, apparently recognizing me as one of his occasional riders--I don't even take that bus every day--, stopped, blocking traffic, so that I could run across and get on. And there's another bus perhaps five or ten minutes behind him, so it wouldn't even be any kind of inconvenience for me to have missed him. But, really, it made my day, and I told him he was awesome.

It made me think back to the year D was in kindergarten. It was a pretty tough year. My grandmother was dying and my mom had taken a leave of absence from work in order to care for her 24/7, so she could die in her own house. My dad was holding down the fort, doing everything in the house and the relationship that my mom would ordinarily have been doing. I was working full time, taking care of D basically by myself since my ex-husband was totally unable to be counted upon, and trying to help my parents out as much as I could (and it wasn't much, unfortunately) with my grandmother. D was in daycare/full time kindergarten near my work, which was the best option, since (see above) I had no one else that year who could help me out with picking him up, etc.

Every morning D and I took the same bus to work/daycare and we had, for months, the same driver. He was a black guy about my age--so late 20s, maybe early 30s at the time--and he was just the nicest man. I'm not saying he didn't flirt with me, and all the other young women passengers, because he did--and frankly, that's nice too if it's done right--but he was nice to everyone. The young women, the middle aged women, the old women, the guys, and the children. He really was the kind of person meant to be in a job dealing with the general public, because you honestly got the idea that he really *did* want us all to have as nice a commute as was humanly possible. I know! Shocker!

So it happened that to get to our bus stop, D and I had to walk up a certain street and then down the block a ways to the stop. And it happened that we were usually running late and hurrying and half-jogging up that street and around the corner. (Have you tried to get a 5 y.o. out of the house in the morning?) Once our very nice bus driver realized that, he began stopping in front of the street that we came down if we weren't at the stop, and looking to see if we were trotting towards it. So we never missed the bus. I can't even tell you how much gratitude I had in my heart for that man some days.

(I also had some lust in my heart for him, being in a long period of sad, post-marital celibacy at the time. I remember one day he was wearing a thermal shirt under his short-sleeved MBTA shirt, and it had a hole in the elbow, and I spent a good ten minutes of my ride contemplating licking his arm through the hole. Yes, I know. It was probably that which pushed me over the edge into the realization that Andrea! Dude! You need to start dating again!)

Ahem. To get back to my non-salacious point, it occurred to me this morning that those little, tiny good deeds you do, the ones that probably don't even inconvenience you or cost you money or take more than a minute out of your day, can really make a stranger's day. And I kind of wanted to encourage you all to do one if the chance arises. Because I know my readers are all very nice people, too.

xoxo