I met Rosemarie today. (Not the one from Dick van Dyke, silly; she's dead.) She was standing at the bus stop and we struck up a conversation. It was 22 degrees out. She wasn't wearing a coat, just a hoodie. The hood was pulled tight around her face. I thought maybe she was homeless or something but when I thought about it later it realized homeless people usually have coats. I gave her my scarf. She declined it at first but eventually took it and put it in her bag. I felt kind of like a dick, then, for forcing this scarf on this lady, implying she was too poor to buy that $2 scarf I'd just handed over. Or maybe it wasn't an implication. Maybe it was a loud and jeering statement of fact and she was too embarrassed to admit she needed it.

We talked about the bus, how unreliable it is, how friendly or unfriendly the drivers can be. We talked about kids today and agreed it was a whole different ballgame for them than it was for us. I said, "When I was in high school, I thought my friends and I were really the end-all, be-all of rebellion and acting up. But compared to a lot of these kids, we were saints." She agreed. She and her friends had been quite the hell raisers too, and they were doing it about fifty years before my friends and I were even thought of. We had to lean in towards each other to hear over the traffic. There was a three-inch long chin hair that I couldn't take my eyes off of. Later, at the appointment I eventually made it to, I couldn't get rid of the thought of pulling that hair out with my bare hands.

Still waiting for the bus, I showed her my phone and the app that said when the bus was supposed to come. She kept thanking me for pulling out my phone to check the app every few minutes. I didn't tell her it was just a nervous, time-wasting habit. The bus came. We didn't sit together; I am not a people person. But I'm not a jerk, either, so I took a seat behind her. We kept chatting. Our bus driver was nice. Rosemarie was concerned about the well-being of a small, local business. I assured her that one of the employees was a good friend of mine and they were doing well. She seemed genuinely relieved.

I felt bad, cutting her off mid-sentence two miles later when the bus reached my stop. I had only 15 minutes to make a 20-minute trek to my destination. I should have gotten her number, suggested a game of rummy or something. I shuffled along the snowy sidewalk and told myself I wanted to hang out with Rosemarie because she was nice, and no one else will play gin with me, and we both seemed a little lonely. And I pretended it wasn't because I chance to rip that whisker out of her chin.