Yesterday, I met Sam.

Every day I walk a mile to and from the law school.  Every day I pass apartments, bus stops, a hotel, and the UK hospital.  I stand on street corners with undergrads, pharmacy students, hospital janitors, patients, and surgeons.  And every day, we march together to the beat of Lexington's drum...

Beep-beep, beep-beep.  
Wait.  
Beep-beep, beep-beep.
Wait.
And then finally: South Limestone.
Walk sign is on to cross South Limestone.

Yesterday, towards the very start of my walk home, I found myself right behind a boy in a red hoodie.  We walked at an almost identical pace, so that it would have been impossible to try and pass him or for him to really distance himself from me.  We walked awkwardly in this rhythm for three-fourths of a mile, even stopping to cross at all of the same crosswalks.  And neither one of us ever said a word.  Until...

After about 15 minutes of walking and waiting, boy in the red hoodie turns down a side street.  "Good," I think.  "I can walk faster now."  But before boy in the red hoodie gets too far away, he turns over his shoulder, grins, and yells - "Nice walking with you!"  To which I stop, look after him, shake my head, and die out laughing.

I continue walking, taking my usual shortcut through the hotel parking lot, and thinking about the boy.  About how much nicer that walk would have been if we had talked to each other the entire way.  About how, when I first started school here, my least favorite thing was that no one on my daily walk would speak back to me when I said hello as I passed them.  About how, four months later, I had become just like them, exactly as I vowed I never would.

I make it through the parking lot to turn on Waller and realize boy in the red hoodie is back, now about fifteen paces ahead of me and walking up the steps to his typical campus-area house.  He sees me.  I yell to him, and he waits for me on his front porch.

Boy in the red hoodie is no longer boy in the red hoodie.  He is Sam, UK student who lives around the block.  And he knows a faster shortcut than I do, through a grassy area, behind the hotel.

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Sam jolted some life back into me.  Sam reminded me that just because the Deep South's hospitality and friendliness I grew up with isn't exactly the common thing up here, that doesn't mean it isn't the right thing still.  Reminded me that, despite hundreds of pages of dense reading and impending final exams and a largely auto-pilot lifestyle, I do not live in a world of cardboard cutouts.  I march to the beat of Lexington's drum with immortals, with very real lives, and very real souls.  Even if the voice telling me when it's time to cross the street is automated, the people I cross the street with are not.

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"To live is the rarest thing in the world.  Most people exist, that is all."
[Oscar Wilde]

Thanks, Sam.  I meant it when I said I hoped you have a great rest of the week.