It started out with me running late. I’ve been sleeping through my alarm lately (I’m still trying to find a solution for this), and I woke up about the same time I should have been grabbing my lunch and heading for the door. All things aside, I wasn’t as terribly as concerned about it as I perhaps should have been, and yet I still made it out the door within a half hour. And then, not even a mile from my house, it started.

There was a woman in a white Buick who had pulled up behind me in the left-hand turn lane. I had watched with morbid fascination as she began applying her pancake makeup, PANCAKE makeup (am I the only one who’s shocked that this is even still in existence?), while we waited for the light to change. The light changed, we turned and I drove to the next red light. Which is when the same woman, in her big ol’ white Buick, realized she was in the left lane when she wanted to be in the right and stopped BOTH lanes of traffic so she could get over. The killer of it was that had she just waited, there was a semi three cars back and she could have merged in front of it. When I pulled up behind her at the next light, she was right back to applying her makeup.

The commute progressed with good tunes, the perfect speed to keep you under the radar but breezing through green lights, and a bright, bright sunshine-y day.

Until I reached my turnoff.

As I sat, once again, in a left-hand turn lane, I watched an older man begin crossing the street on a green light. He was walking with a cane (and not a white cane indicating he had problems with his eye sight, mind you), and I thought perhaps he was just getting a head start on his crossing. Surely he wouldn’t be stupid (asshole) enough to keep crossing in front of traffic that had the right of way.

I was wrong.

The jackass stood in the DEAD CENTER of the turn lane on a blinking red which legally gives the driver of a motorized vehicle the right to turn left once opposing traffic has cleared. It’s the one time I’ve ever come close to jumping out of my car to kick someone’s ass. What pissed me off the most though was the woman in the silver Nissan SUV who allowed him to do it. She’d been talking on her cell, and instead of *politely* inching up to block him from crossing into the turn lane, she just let him stand there. And then when the left-hand turn light turned green, we still had to wait for him to finish crossing out of our lane. Finally, FINALLY I made the turn, and proceeded to the next red light. When that light turned green, I merged straight into the right hand lane and began accelerating, anticipating the right hand turn onto the Interstate.

Until the previously mentioned bitch driving the Nissan SUV cut across three lanes of traffic from the left lane, swerved in front of me while I slammed on my brakes, and made the turn onto I-75 while I mentally rearranged my body to put my heart back into my chest from its current location in my toes.

I was furious, self-righteous, infuriated (did I mention angry?). As I continued my commute, I mentally composed my Facebook post, changing the wording, an adjective here, the pronoun I was going to use there, and listened to “angry”, drive faster music (think Metallica, Alice in Chains, and Rob Zombie). Pulling into the parking lot, I debated about posting to Facebook right then and there, and finally decided no, I was late enough and I’d be able to post my angry-yet-funny status in less than twenty minutes. I got out of my car and began the walk of the righteous to the building.

Between the lot I park in and the building I work in, there lies a partially abandoned building. The building used to be a bakery for one of the casinos, and now may or not be used as storage, but it’s the secure parking lot behind the building that remains in use. Shuttle buses for the casinos are parked there, but unless there’s a game going on, the building, and the lot, remains still.

Except for the two three-step stoops facing Jefferson. Those stoops are a common hangout throughout the day for the less-fortunate of Detroit. And that morning was no exception.

I had seen him before. Very tall, more coffee than cream in color, and with a severe lazy eye, he’s a polite man. When he speaks, you can tell he’s a step or two behind, and you wonder, or at least I do, if his situation is because his family have all passed on, unable to provide for his needs after their death. Or perhaps he was one of the unfortunate souls who was left with nowhere to go after the state-funded homes for the mentally challenged were closed. His shopping cart with his worldly possessions sat on the sidewalk in  front of him while he was reclined on the stoop, dressed all in orange.

“Good morning,” I said as I approached.

“Good morning, beautiful! How are you today?” he asked with a huge smile.

“It’s been a morning,” I snickered. “And how are you?”

“Blessed!” he declared.

This man, who has no home, no money, no job, possibly no family or friends, who carries all of his belongings in a shopping cart, told me that he was blessed.

I’d been served.