There but for the Grace of God...

Last Friday, I was so happy because after work I was going shopping. I thought about it all day and it made me smile. I was just going to buy some suitable work clothes (seven years in an IT department, working odd shifts means I have a lot of casual and not a lot of "office appropriate" clothing) but it has been months since I could afford anything not deemed "essential."
I went to Ross because even though I wanted to buy clothes, I didn't want to break the bank. I bought three pair of pants and three sweaters and a set of new flannel sheets and spent under a hundred dollars. I was elated.

Because my poor old Volvo is no more (towed away by the good people of Redwood City), I take the train and buses to get around (for now). So I was riding the number 22 bus on Friday night. The number 22 bus is notorious for a couple of reasons. First because it runs for 22 hours a day and second (because of the first reason), homeless people frequent the line in order to stay warm and dry in the winter. So the number 22 terminates in Palo Alto and in East San Jose. I took it to Palo Alto and waited for my next bus, the KX, which runs from Palo Alto to San Francisco and stops all along El Camino Real until after San Mateo. The ride to Redwood City takes about fifteen minutes.
As I was waiting for the bus, sitting on a bench in a brightly lit area, a man sitting to my left began to roll himself a cigarette. I was hoping he was waiting for my bus because whenever a smoker lights up, his bus comes immediately, providing no time for him to enjoy his cigarette. The man, who was pleasant enough and was wearing a flannel shirt and a down vest with jeans and hiking boots, and who sported a pretty bushy but well-tended beard, asked me if I knew what the time was. I said I did and told him it was 8:23. He was quiet and lit his cigarette. I asked him which bus he was waiting for. He was waiting for the 22.
Sure enough, a minute later, before he'd even taken a drag off his cigarette, the 22 bus came and the people waiting for it piled on. Everyone but the smoker. He sat there and smoked his cigarette until after his bus had gone.
I said, "Did you miss your bus just so you could finish your smoke?" And he smiled and said that since he's homeless, he'd just wait for the next one. We began talking about his homelessness. I asked him questions about how he'd become homeless and he was very kind and answered my questions with a candor that surprized me. Especially when he told me that he couldn't really get/hold a job because he'd had 65 arrests over the years. I was astonished! I have often considered myself to be a criminal because I was once busted for driving with a suspended license (suspended because I was unable to afford to pay off a ticket) and this is something I'm ashamed of and hardly ever tell people about and here's this guy telling me he's had over six hundred felony convictions since he was 15!
We talked about the places he goes to panhandle and to sleep and he mentioned some places in the neighborhood I grew up in. I said I was familiar with that area (in the South Bay) and he said he'd gone to school at ________________. My high school! What?! I couldn't believe it! My high school is in a really affluent community. And it's a college prep school and was very white, very straight and very respectable when I went there. And I judged this guy to be around my own age. Turns out he was supposed to graduate three years after me but he dropped out the year I graduated and started getting into "trouble with the law."
I was so shocked. And he was so nice and so not like the stereotypical "career criminal" we see on TV and read about.
I felt so humbled meeting this guy. I felt so blessed and so lucky and so grateful. And he impressed me with his manners and with the fact that he didn't try to hit me up for money.
And as I got on my bus and left him smoking another hand-rolled cigarette, I waved at him and I thought, "There but for the Grace of God go I."