Stealing glances

My favorite commutes are the days when your eyes, locked in a book, take a break to monitor other passengers on the train. Sometimes the effort loses momentum and the critical glances fall back to the page. Sometimes they catch beautiful moments. Sometimes disagreeable moments. And sometimes they glue themselves to the subtle and unclassifiable beauties in other people.

One of my favorite pastimes lies in discovering hidden beauties that differentiate us from each other. I think the search has its roots in my need to transform the average into extraordinary, partially because it comforts me and strokes my confidence and partially because it makes me appreciate surprises all the more.

She wasn’t strikingly beautiful. Not the kind of beautiful that demands attention – the perfect symmetry, the body fat perfectly placed in all the right spots and in all the right proportions. Dressed in olive green cargo pants and an ill-fitting sweater reminiscent of the latest nursing home fashions, she did not don the most elegant attire. She didn’t fit the traditional beauty mold, but her eyes pierced the morning – black, perfectly shaped and unattributed to any ethnic group I could identify without more careful study. Her mahogany hair stuffed into a knit cap loosely spilled onto her shoulders. With thick, rose lips, she sipped a large drip coffee from 7-11 as her eyes scanned the crowd.

We were playing the same game that morning and caught glances three times. I smiled the guilty smile that accompanies making eye contact with strangers, closed my book, and gathered my things for the next stop.

She easily commanded the label of being the most stunning person on the train. I wonder if she knew.