It was almost midnight when I ran for the last bus and watched it pull away from the curb without me. I stood there in the cold, phone battery nearly dead, wallet nearly empty after a long trip, and no clear way to get across the city before morning.
I sat down on the bench at the empty station, trying to think of someone I could call. That was when a man about my father's age sat down at the other end of the bench, holding two coffees. He offered me one without a word of explanation, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
We talked for a while — about nothing important, really, just the kind of conversation strangers have when there is nothing else to do but wait. Eventually he asked where I needed to go, and when I told him, he said it was on his way and offered me a ride. I hesitated, the way anyone would with a stranger at midnight, but something about him put me at ease, and I accepted.
He dropped me exactly where I needed to be, refused any money for gas, and drove off before I had even finished thanking him. I never learned his name or saw him again. For years afterward, whenever someone complained that people in big cities were cold and unwilling to help each other, I thought of that stranger and his two coffees, and I said nothing, because I knew better.
Now, whenever I see someone stranded late at night, I try to do for them what he did for me — not because I expect anything back, but because I still remember exactly how it felt to be the one waiting alone in the cold.