I rode a Chicago bus yesterday to get up to the United Center for the Black Sabbath show last night, and somewhere around Milwaukee Avenue an older Mexican American fellow climbed aboard with his shoe shine box. He sat there rubbing his hands and wincing as if his hands were very much cold, in pain, or likely both. A woman seated next to must have noticed this as I did and offered him some gloves. You should have seen the look of surprise and appreciation on his face. It was a very tender moment of generosity to observe.

The glove giving gal was thin, looked to be in her late 40's or early 50's, was wearing a John Lennon type Army coat, had really short blond hair, and she had kind of a "butchy" demeanor, for lack of a better word. Actually, after the fact it dawned on me that she looked and acted a lot like like the actress, Jane Lynch, the boss in 40-Year-Old Virgin and the lesbian dog trainer in Best In Show.

"Hey, sport! Want some gloves?"

Shoe shining guy's English was not great, but that didn't stop glove-giver from telling him a bunch of information. After giving him the big and bulky gloves, she showed him the slimmer ones that she was wearing and said "These are for gun handling," and "These are for handling guns" - in case he didn't hear the first time. She said she was a retired cop and for some reason told a story about her and some other officers arresting a drug dealer. Apparently the dealer shot her partner and during the exchange giant bags of "china white" exploded everywhere and exposure to the drug led to her to being laid up in a hospital for 10 days, regularly hallucinating all through out her stay (which doesn't sound all bad).

(A good time. If you have a lot of free time in your immediate future)

Wow.

What started a nice moment of a woman performing an act of kindness for a random senior citizen quickly escalated into a crazy violent crime adventure story straight out of "Scarface." I did not see that coming at all, but you do have to expect the unexpected when you hop on a Chicago bus.

Be kind to others, readers. And watch out for accidental ingestian of dangerous amounts of "China white," whatever the hell that is.