The bus squeaked to a stop and in front of me the door sighed open to reveal a huge grin in a blue jacket.
"Will this take me to BYU?" I asked.
"Sure will," said the driver.
I dropped my coins in the bin and took a seat near the front. A grin spread across my face as I realized that the air was warm. I looked around to find all kinds of people from different backgrounds. Their were beautiful people and plain people, there was a black woman who sat across the aisle and a Vietnamese girl toward the front.
I tuned in to her conversation with the bus driver. He had been to Vietnam before? When? During the war? I missed that.
"It was sure beautiful when I went there," said the man.
"Oh yeah," said the Asian girl. "It's really beautiful." She smiled.
"Of course, it's all changed by now," said the man.
"Yeah, especially south Saigon..." said the girl.
Her voice faded because I thought to myself of Saigon and the war in the 1970s. I thought of my friend's mom, Tuyet, who fled Vietnam by hopping aboard a large American helicopter. In elementary school, I always wondered how his mom could be so spontaneous, risky, brave, and desperate.
That memory came back to me because of that bus full of people I don't know. What a cool experience.
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