The Kindness of Strangers

Yesterday in Houston at approximately 3:12 p.m. it rained. And, like many rains in Houston, it started without warning, the streets were quickly flooded, and my wipers wiped the windshield enthusiastically. I was with a friend on our way to our favorite (and perhaps only) coffee shop, Bohemeos in the East End and after turning onto Cullen, I saw a white, blond woman already drenched, walking across the street in the middle of the nowhere warehouse area. There were no bus shelters, no trees, no awnings to keep her dry. 

I drove past her, thinking that I had my destination to get to, an obgligation to help my friend finish writing a chapter, it was already mid-afternoon and I had accomplished no writing myself, that she was already soaking wet and more water wasn't going to make a difference, that my new car didn't need a wet body sitting on its clean seats. 

I turned around, drove up to her, rolled down the windows, asked her if she would like a ride. 

Before going further, I have to ask the following questions:

1. Would I have turned around if this were a guy?
2. Would I have turned around if she were black or Latina?
3. Would I have turned around if my friend was not in the car? In other words, was I trying to myself feel good with some social validation?
4. Would she have accepted the ride if I were driving single, just a white male?
5. Would she have accepted if she were black, if I were single or with a woman?
6. Would a black man accept a ride from a white man?
7. What am I missing here in my own interrogation?

Back to story. She almost grudgingly accepted, but got in the back seat, explaining that she was new to that area of Houston, had gotten on the wrong bus route, and needed to get home before her pre-K son's bus returned at 4p. The trip to her house wasn't long -- just up the freeway feeder, down Scott, right at McGowan, left at Drew, a few blocks. She has four boys, lives in a rough part of the Third Ward, "but the rent is cheap," she excused herself. She expressed her thanks as she got out, and I instinctively looked back to my once pristine back seats and saw an enormous puddle of water. It is what it is.

Ten minutes later we were at Bohemeo's and I offered to keep the door open to a young man who had just arrived, mostly dry, on his bike. He walked through the door without a word. I don't expect vocal expressions of gratitude, though my father taught me to always say thank you, and I suppose I just lied when I said I don't expect such expressions.

Did I feel "good" about giving a young mother of four boys a ride in the pouring rain to shorten her walk, her walk in the rain? Not really. It just is. Did I feel offended when cyclist dude didn't say, "Thanks"? Not really. It just is. Strangers passing strangers, never to meet again. 

I woke this morning to find that my car had been entered last night -- I forgot to lock the doors -- and someone/s had ransacked the glove compartment (where I never keep gloves), gone through the books on the seats. I didn't have anything of value there -- apparently my PetsMart discount card isn't liquid currency in most circles -- and nothing was broken or scratched. But of course, I'm thinking, "Why would someone do that? Likely a bunch of kids on a summer night with nothing to do, no place out here in the 'burbs to hang out without making trouble, testing their boundaries, looking for cash or condoms or Monster drinks or whatever kids look for these days. Strangers. Strangers without kindness. But without malice, to be fair.

Years ago, in another city, I walked across the square and saw a young man sitting on the sidewalk, asking for money. He was sitting on the sidewalk; not standing, not on a bench. He was likely 22, white, seemingly healthy. I was a poor college student (really) and barely had dollars in my own wallet. I chose my needs over his needs, and walked by. Immediately I felt bad, but I had a bus to catch, you know? But I promised that the next time I saw him, I'd give him at least a freakin' dollar.

I walked across that square a hundred more times and never saw him. His strangerness remains to this day.

A year later I took a train to New York and got caught in a blizzard in Buffalo, which -- honestly -- is a boring city anyway -- but on Christmas Eve, when the city is closed because of the snow (and when Buffalo closes because of snow, you know it's bad), and the train had to wait until the tracks were cleared or something. We were stuck in the train/bus station for hours, the concession stands closed because no one could come to work. Nothing but snack machines. 

I saw a guy, young, but sick, sitting in the bus area. He perhaps was 25, white, but green. His face was really green. His clothes were old and worn, he spent most of the time just sitting, bent slightly over. I avoided him, because that's what I do with people. I avoid them. But as our train was called, I felt I had learned my lesson from the guy on the square, so just in time where I wouldn't need to engage in a full conversation with a stranger, I walked up to him, offered him a bill, and said, "Hey, can you use this?" He looked up at me, and without a grin or smirk or any sense of condescension or dismissal, reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the biggest roll of bills I had seen and said, "Do you want this?" I got it. I'm slow, but I'm not stupid. I said, "OK, man," [because that's the ultimate conversation closer between guys -- "OK, man."] and turned to walk away.

As I was about three feet away, he whispered just loud enough for me to hear but no one else, "God bless you." 

I haven't been to Buffalo since [To see the Falls, always go to the Canadian side; much better than the US side. Trust me]. There's no way I'll see that stranger again, if he's still alive.

In Houston, I planned a simple evening with a girlfriend. Spaghetti Warehouse on the bayou, close enough to walk to the old Angelika. Too much lasagna, I asked for a box to go and we walked up Fannin and across Congress.

I saw a guy sitting on the wide white sidewalk, doing nothing. I took my box of half-eaten lasagna and offered it to him, asked if he would like it and the half-eaten bread. He was grateful and took it, but didn't open the box. He said, "Be careful of the bird." We looked around and saw a green hummingbird sitting on the hot sidewalk, only feet away; I could have stepped on it because I was more focused on approaching the stranger than looking around me. The bird would die soon, but wouldn't die alone. The man sitting on the sidewalk, doing nothing, was marking death of one of those wonderful creatures that shimmer with light in their green and red wings. A sacred rite of the wake, sitting with the dead. 

As we walked away to our overpriced theater tickets, the man still hadn't opened the Styrofoam box, but was transfixed on the bird, refusing to release it from his own gaze. Two species, apart, together for a few more hours. A stranger to me, but I loved him in some deep, anonymous way, for being more human than most of us. Whatever his circumstances, whatever brought him to his homeless state, his actions that afternoon, of all the actions that I would never see before or after, showed a glimmer of the infinite, that commonality within us all. 

I go; I come; I tend to walk with my head towards the ground because I've got so many thoughts in my head (mostly useless, I promise -- the thoughts, not the head), and that's one of my greatest weaknesses -- missing the stranger, letting her walk by without speaking to her; sitting next to him without acknowledging his existence. That's our postmodern civilization -- cities of strangers. We do so at our peril. Israel and Gaza; "Americans" and 8 year old brown boys from Guatemala. We don't see the infinite in us all, and we treat each other as strangers as we have no right to do. Damn Carl Sagan. He was right all along. Sagan was always right.

“What is the verdict of the vastest mind?
Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.
Man is a stranger to his own research;
He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,
Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.
But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,
Guided by thought, have measured the faint stars,
Our being mingles with the infinite;
Ourselves we never see, or come to know.”

― Voltaire

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