So I had a pre-hire physical at the other hospital yesterday. I decided to take the bus home to check out one possible commute route.
It is cold and very windy. I'd say well below zero f with wind chill. So I'm standing at the bus stop waiting for the 92 and a 151 pulls up (the 151 doesn't run on this road). Now this route has a lot of busses returning to the garage that do not stop so I ignore it but the guy opened the door and said "Going east?" I got on and said yes, told him where I was going, and he said he was going that way. I thought it was weird but he picked up someone else on the way, a very skeptical Korean woman who nonetheless wanted out of the cold too, so at least I wasn't alone if this was some kind of weird abduction. Anyway, I made it to my stop and we both thanked the driver profusely for saving us from frostbite. I went to my next stop thinking about what how it was a nice thing he did.
This bus stop is in a weird spot. It's at a high school and there is a bike-share station there. So it's not cleared of snow very well, well out into the stteet, and I'm standing on a pile of ice and snow and slush. As I'm standing there, I caught a glint of metal in the snow right in front of me and upon inspection, realize it's a cell phone. I look around and there is no one, except for the Korean woman across the street. I pick it up, dust it off, and try to power it on thinking to call/text someone to let them know I found it. The "needs charging" thing comes up, which is well and good since it's an iPhone of some sort and I have no idea how to operate it anyway. I put it in my pocket figuring one of my universal chargers at home will charge it and then I can find the owner somehow. I think, "I guess that's karma somehow, that bus driver picked me up and now I get to be nice to someone else."
A few minutes later, a guy in a CTA uniform carrying a lunchbox comes up and a few seconds after that a bus pulls up. It was very close to the curb despite the snow and ice, I note that it ran over right where I found the phone. I get on, the CTA guy gets on and I guess it's a shift change because he take over and the other driver heads to the back. This takes about 5 minutes as they do whatever they have to do. Just as the bus is ready to pull out, a group of girls gets on and as they're scanning their cards, another girl runs up in a panic and they all start talking. I'm checking market data on my phone at this point but I hear bits an pieces. "...he swore he didn't take it...lying...I just ran all the way back from Lawrence to try to find it....just got the phone, my dad is going to kill me...." That last bit kind of sinks in and I call over to them, "Did you lose a phone?" Well, to shorten the long story, it was indeed hers. When I gave it to her she started crying, explosively. Like someone had just rescued her from a desert island or an abducted family member was found. The gaggle of girls were chittering like crazy as they all pulled out their own phones to reassure themselves.
But I'm thinking about everything that had to fall into place for her to get her phone back like that. If that bus driver hadn't decided to pick me up off his route, surely the bus picking me up would have run over the phone. If there hadn't happened to have been a shift change, we would have been gone before she got there. If she hadn't decided, in some desperate shot-in-the-dark, to run back to school she wouldn't have caught my bus to go back home. If there hadn't been a shift change delaying the bus. If her friends hadn't been getting on, delaying the bus. If she hadn't been loudly lamenting the loss of her phone...
