by Mary Schmich
This is a small story
from a woman I know:
It was shortly after 7 a.m. Thursday, and the woman had just driven into Chicago from her home in Evanston, headed for another day at work. Waiting at a light, preparing to turn into an underground parking garage, she noticed a bus idled at a curb. The driver, still in uniform, stepped out.
Chicago’s underground road network is smelly and grimy, and in this netherworld, the driver walked to a ramp near a short staircase where a couple of people appeared to be
sleeping, alongside a baby stroller. Next to the sleeping people, he laid a plastic bag of what appeared to be food.
That’s all.
The scene lasted barely a minute. The light changed. The woman turned and entered the garage, parked, and then, to her surprise, sat in her car sobbing.
“I’m not usually a crier,” she said later. “I think it was just the beauty of this moment I observed that totally caught me off guard.”
It was the beauty coupled with its unheralded,
unexpected nature.
“At that time of the morning,” she said. “I was thinking: ‘Here’s everything I have to do today; I just fought traffic; what’s it going to be like when I get in the office?’ Then to see such a simple, beautiful thing.”
The driver’s good deed was amplified by the fact that he hadn’t sought attention, and as far as she knew, no one but her had noticed...
READ MORE 
