Bus Report #983

Yesterday morning a man got on our 33, swinging three backpacks and juggling several cans of soup in his arms. He sat down in the front of the bus and rolled the soups between his hands, mumbling all the while,  for the duration of his ride.

He stumbled from the bus in the Upper Haight, and in doing so dropped one of his backpacks on the bus. He started walking away, and the driver shut the door, so I said, "excuse me, driver, his backpack's still here."
She opened the door and I called over to him. "Sir, your backpack, do you want me to throw it over to you?"
He looked confused, smiled and then shrugged. "No."
"You don't want your backpack? Are you sure?"
"No, no." And he walked away.

In the mirror, the driver and I exchanged glances, both of us confused and wary at the same time.
"Do you want me to throw it off the bus or something?" I asked her.
She shook her head. "Leave it. Someone else will do something with it along the route."
Well, okay.

For the rest of the ride, people stepped around the backpack, or stared at it, or tried to locate its owner sitting elsewhere on the bus. It was old and raggedy, obviously a second or third hand backpack. But it had belonged to the man just a few minutes earlier.

When it was my turn to get out, the bag was still there.