Two subway passengers the other night...

...just before midnight, when it was windy and cold out:

Two minor children, one like eight years old and (black) and innocent-seeming and with a bright shiny face, and the other a maybe twelve or thirteen year-old (taller) (thin) (white) kid with dishwater hair and a pointed face and not quite a monobrow, and both are in heavy black hoodies and knit caps, and with black backpacks.

They talk about meeting someone who's going to pick them up at the other end of the subway line, and it's clear that the younger (black) kid really looks up to the (taller) (thin) (white) kid, and doesn't realize yet that he's improvising a lot and just talking like he understands and is in control of stuff.

And, at some point they start opening up the backpacks, and the (white) kid pulls out a couple small jewelry boxes, and he opens them up and starts looking at each ring inside, and he holds one out across the aisle to show the other kid.

And, the (black) kid opens up his backpack, and he pulls out a big silver Zippo lighter, and he tries to use it but he can't, so the (white) kid tells him what to do, and he tries it and lights it up, and after it's clear that he can do it, he loses interest and puts it back in his backpack.

Then, some stop comes up and they get out, much much before the end of the line, in fact well on the opposite side of downtown.

And, it's still not quite midnight, and the city is as deserted as it has been.

The next day, I think about Dickens and personality types from Oliver Twist, and how we might be getting back there, as a society, back to the inequality and the harshness, and also the unpredictability of life before cell phones, where you just never know what you'll see whenever you go out in the world.

It's more dangerous and more awful for people, but in some ways, it's more interesting.  There's just these little blips of pockets of people everywhere, and you never know who they are or that they even exist, until you happen to end up intersecting with them.