I’ve been meaning to write about this for a few weeks now…finally sitting down to tell this story.

A few weeks, back, I had been to a late lunch/early dinner with a friend. It was a perfect Spring evening, warm with a nice breeze. It was after 7pm but the day was still bright as the sun was starting to set.

I had the roof open and all the windows were down as I was driving. It felt so good to shake off the winter cold and let the wind whip thru the car. I had the stereo on of course…I mean isn’t that what you do when you are driving along? I know I was singing along to whatever was on the radio!

As I was driving along, I noticed a white SUV driving next to me on my right side. I didn’t pay much attention to it…except maybe I stopped singing as loud! I looked over at the driver and saw a young man at the wheel. And when I say young, I mean young! He looked about 12 but was likely around 20-ish….if that! He was cute….for a kid! Blonde hair…looked like he just jumped off of the cover of GQ. He was by himself in his fancy Audi SUV. I shook my head a little thinking “it must be nice to have a fancy ride at that age!”

We were coming up to a traffic light and as we approached, the light turned red. We both stopped. There was that moment when you just know someone is looking at you….so I turned and for sure, this young man was looking right at me. And then it happened….

His window was also open. I turned and looked and suddenly, he simply smiled and waved at me and said “hi”. I seriously did not know what to think. What was this little kid doing? Why did he do that? Did he really just do that? Was I seeing things???? And then the light turned green and we were off again, driving side by side down the road.

And then we came to another set of lights. I had this feeling he was going to punch it and scoot thru the lights and keep on going. But he didn’t. He stopped and again, was right beside me. I could have ignored him. I could have kept looking straight ahead. I could have…but I didn’t.

I turned and looked at him and simply asked why did he wave and say hi? I wasn’t mad or mean or confrontational….I was just so curious. And he smiled again, looked right at me and said, “I was just saying hi” And really, you could tell this was exactly what he was doing. Nothing more, nothing less, just a young man smiling at an old lady and saying hello. What could I say to that? So I said that was really nice and I told him I hoped he had a great evening…and he smiled.

The light turned green…and I turned left as he drove off straight ahead. And all I could do was smile thinking what a cool thing it was that just happened. And how more people should just smile and wave and say hello to a stranger. Because it would make the world a better place.