Wheels In His Head Go Round And Round

Written by Ricardo R. Arnett    Wednesday, 01 April 2009

For the past few years I have driven a neighbor's car to work. She hardly ever used it and made the offer one night over dinner. I accepted. It was a Nissan Maxima, although the car never lived up to the billing. Everyone called her Minima instead. I didn't care. I loved her, and I sensed a certain respect in return. Minima and I got along famously. Like the girl who's not much of a looker, Minima had a great personality. Yes, she had a few dents in her rear, a few rust spots on her belly, and you never, ever, felt as if you were riding on air, but Minima never failed to get me to work. And now she's gone. My neighbor retired last month and moved to Rhode Island, taking Minima with her. Minima's departure means I have returned to mass transit, not necessarily a bad thing in this age when we're all supposed to be green. Green is good. Even if Minima were hardly a huge gas-guzzling SUV, she was still a car taking up space on the road, polluting the air. So these days I take a subway to a bus that eventually gets me to the office. And in the process I have returned to my first love: I get to people-watch, analyze them, then write their life story. For as long as I can remember, I have passed time trying to figure out who people are. In airports. At the mall. On the subway and the bus. The woman reading the trashy paperback. Is she on her way to a job at Macy's? Does she still have issues with her mother? Does she like that book? The young man lost in the music that is rumbling through his headphones, music even I can hear three seats away. Is he hoping to start a band of his own? Or is he already deaf? The older man looking straight ahead, expressionless. Is he about to leave his wife? Or just thinking how he shouldn't have had that third cup of coffee? Maybe his wife wants to leave him. I've always assumed I was alone in my fascination with strangers. I'm not. I was talking to a journalism class at the University of Virginia the other night. The students were telling me their ideas for feature stories. One woman said she wanted to write a profile on an immigrant woman who cleans the offices where she works. Why, I asked? The student said she wanted to know who this woman was, where she's from, how she got here. She said she has been wondering about her life for months now. I understood completely. In fact, I'm pretty sure that woman rides my bus.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01 April 2009 )