Decided not to walk home from the gym, but to use my brand new spanking November MUNI pass. Hopped on the 10 at the (old) Federal Reserve steps on Sansome. Well, in reality it’s like wait 10 minutes staring blindly at my nails until the bus finally comes. I’m eavesdropping on a girl in front of me telling her mom about her new job (50K a year), her training schedule, then she talks to her Dad about global warming. Sigh. Move up to bus driver to find out exactly how close the route goes to my house. We come to a stop, and the driver tells me, “This man will take you there,” gesturing to another MUNI driver outside the bus. “We are brothers. He will take care of you.”

Driver number one leaves, stumbling kind of like he had a long shift, and the two drivers hug. Driver two sits down and starts the long process of adjusting his seat. While he does this, he says, “He’s not really my brother. He’s from Afghanistan. But we talk in Arabic. In the morning, he blesses me. And I give him the 3 kisses. But it’s not really kisses.” He adjusts his review mirrors. “It’s like… a greeting.”
We talk about European kissing greetings, then the conversation winds back to prayers.
“It’s nice in the morning, to get a blessing.”
I told him I wished someone blessed me before I started working.
“Well, you can do that yourself.” He says.
“But it’s nicer when someone does it for you.”
I got off the bus, and he said: “have a good day,” and I said, “have a good day,” and I thought of how that is a pretty poor substitute.
He continued down Bay Street.

Note on photo: This is from last week, from the evil Oracle conference-causing closure of Howard St.