Some background: this afternoon I had physical therapy. I usually leave the PT's office somewhere between 5:10-5:25 pm, so I never quite know if I missed the bus (Muni), which takes me to the BART station. If I miss it, I usually just walk to BART, since it's all downhill (though you won't catch me walking TO PT).
Anyway... I got out of PT at 5:05 pm, walked to the bus stop shelter, and peered around the side to look at the ticker and see how long it was until the next bus. As I peered around the corner, I was met with a large amount of marijuana smoke and a big smiling face.
If you've spent much time in San Francisco lately (or even watched coverage of the World Series), you will have undoubtedly smelled the distinct aroma of marijuana while walking around (and it's not just restricted to The Haight - we smell it all the time coming in the window at work from the street below - in the Financial District!) An (obviously) homeless guy was sitting on the bus stop smoking marijuana.
Okay, back to the homeless man! He looks up at me and asks me, in the kindest way, "Hey! Would you like a hit." I politely smiled at him and tell him "oh, no thanks." He then looks at me and says, "whatcha looking for? the time?" I then explained to him that I was just checking to see how long until the bus came and that if it was a while I'd just walk. He looked at me with a big smile and said "Are you SURE you don't want some of this?" Again, I said "no thanks" and told him to have a nice evening.
Without condoning the smoking of marijuana, I would like to say I was touched by his generosity (cue the eye rolling :) It could easily have been very creepy or annoying to me. But he was SO friendly and happy (and yes, mellow...). There's no doubt in my mind he was homeless. Here's a guy, who likely doesn't have much in his life, much less a roof over his head, and he was so excited to share something he very obviously enjoyed with a complete stranger.
It's kinda like me sharing chocolate with the person sitting next to me on BART.
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