I’ve been saving up some things in the ‘Thoughts’ memo on my Palm Pilot.
- Sometimes drivers are intimidated by buses and let them pass or merge. But if it’s rush hour, they think “no way am I letting that big bus ahead of me.”
- I see a lot of people during my commute. Sometimes I want to get up and say “is anybody else here gay?” I’d have to say “else” so they didn’t think I was some religious fanatic out to save them. (Nobody would think I was trying to beat up fags – I don’t look like I could beat anybody up.)
- What do you do when you see someone on the street begging for money? I see one guy almost daily, sitting on the same steps and muttering about spare change in a gravelly voice as he rattles a cup. Today I also saw a woman – maybe in her 50s or 60s, though the street might have aged her – holding a sign saying that the was homeless, her husband died, and she sleeps on the streets. The sign asked for change for “bp. medication, clothing, food” and she had a blank look on her face. I wanted to help, but felt so powerless.
- Sometimes I think of life in terms of the lives of famous people. I barely missed being alive at the same time as John Lennon. I’m not sure if my girlfriend was alive at the same time as Martin Luther King Jr. I have a couple of friends who were alive when John F. Kennedy was killed.