Pretty Woman.

I was sitting on the crosstown bus diligently reading last week’s New York Magazine that I hadn’t had a chance to get around to. It was early (even though I was running late) and the traffic along Fifth Avenue was in near gridlock. I tried not to think about it (or check my watch) but I knew it wasn’t looking good.

It’s always the mornings where I have to be at work for a meeting or a phone call that the traffic is at its worst. Days when it wouldn’t matter if I showed up at the office at all, we breeze down and through Central Park in what feels like mere seconds.

So I sat patiently and tried to absorb as much as I could about stock-surfing the tsunami (whatever that means) as seconds turned to minutes turned to I-am-going-to-seriously-freak-out-if-we-don’t-get-moving-soon.

I could sense it before anything else, just at the moment I was about to really start breaking out into full blown hysterics- eyes watching me. Tense and slow I looked up, and saw, much to my surprise, a little girl about six years old on her knees in the seat in front of me. Her face was about one foot from mine and she was looking directly into my eyes. She had a pink headband on with a big flower on it, and a bright orange backpack strapped to her back. There was something about the innocence of her face, her bright blue eyes and pale as snow cheeks that made me hate the way this city, with its schedules and deadlines and routines, can sometimes make you so ugly.

We looked at each other for a minute, me confused, and her, just smiling without a care in the world with a look on her face like she knew something I didn’t. "You’re pretty," she said very matter-of-factly, leaving me sitting there looking like a deer in the headlights. Her mother, who I only then noticed was sitting next to her, told her this was their stop and they left the bus without another word.

Strange isn’t it, what we see when we open our eyes?

And once they were gone, the traffic (thank God) began to move.