He asked how my week was going before I had finished putting the fare in. Not a perfunctory ask — the kind where the person actually waits for the answer. I told him honestly that I did not know yet, that I hadn't decided what shape the days would take.
He said, with the lightest grin, that most weeks started that way and that it was usually fine by Wednesday. Then he asked where I was headed, and I told him the train station, and he said there was a quicker one if I walked two streets north — about ten minutes saved, and a view of the canal on the way.
It was a four-minute exchange. Nothing consequential. The view of the canal was, in fact, completely ordinary. But I have been carrying around the small surprise of being treated as a person on a Tuesday morning commute — the same surprise I think children feel when an adult bends down to their level, of which there must be a name, and which I am not yet sure how to give back.