Gripping stranger #4: Mom

Hair always in a neat, thick ponytail, you carry a reusable fabric grocery bag full of what you'll need for the day, an umbrella in case it rains, sometimes using it to cover your daughter, growing tall and standing next to you at the bus stop on Davie Street. Once seated on the bus you might absently help dust something off her jeans, the trendy straight-legged kind you bought for her because that's what she wants to wear with her pink high-top Converse sneakers that show her feet extending into the willowy, doe-eyed creature she's growing up so fast to become. These moments on the morning bus are slow and easy between the two of you, as you enjoy a comfortable silence made possibly only because she is one you love the most. You treat her tenderly and kindly, tastefully stepping away as she meets her friend from Grade 7 on the corner across from school. You'll leave them to talk and walk away without saying goodbye, but once you've crossed the street I turn around to see you standing there in front of the bagel shop, watching them to make sure they get there safely, loving her.

Gripping stranger #3: Beatnik Dad

You are so cool. You are a living example of what it means to age awesomely. Salt and pepper hair and slip-on sneakers that are making no attempts to be trendy or gauche, just comfortable and smart and easy for running to the bus stop with your nine-year-old daughter, who follows in your footsteps and reads precocious paperback novels while wearing a beret, violin tucked between her kilted knees. She is beautiful and smart and alive and sure of herself in a way that young girls rarely are, and I am proud of her for you. I think you guys are friends. This makes me happy.

Gripping stranger #2: Seagull Lady

Every morning at approximately 7:33 a.m., the seagulls in my neighbourhood start flying in wild circles by my apartment behind Delany's coffee shop on Denman Street. The gulls cry out to each other and shriek excitedly in bird-language, and the crowds grow thicker as they watch you approach through the alley down from Lord Roberts Annex elementary school. You're wearing a white cap and carrying a bright yellow plastic bag from the discount grocery store in Denman Place Mall. The seagulls swoop lower, braver ones positioning themselves aggressively along the ledge of a nearby outdoor apartment parkade. You walk calmly amidst the excitement towards the empty one-car parking spot behind the coffee shop that will be filled in half an hour by Robin Delany or someone else like him. You empty the contents of the yellow bag and the birds go wild, crowding the driveway with their quarterback bodies and surrounding you with noise. Once you offered what was in the bag to a truck driver who'd parked in the alley across from the gulls, coming back to him after you'd finished with the birds. A generous woman, my boyfriend said as we watched from the window in our pajamas.

Gripping stranger #1: Golden Boy

I often see you loping across the Burrard Bridge in the morning, a golden retriever of a man tastefully attired in seasonally-appropriate business casual clothing, your brown leather messenger bag ostensibly filled by a nutritious yet tasty lunch hanging just so below your right hip. You'll carry a dapper umbrella on rainy days, a light sporting jacket on warmer ones. Always with your head slightly tilted to the side with the seeds of a wide, easy smile about to burst across your face, I look to you for inspriation. You represent to me the possibility of a better, more optimistic world, unburdened by the angst and melencholy of people like me. I picture you as the beautiful child in every elementary school's dream class who wins the hearts of female teachers because of your demure intelligence, while maintaining the admiration of boys because of your athleticism and sense of adventure. I want to shake your hand and congratulate you for a job well done. I was never sure if you recognized me but I would always be pleased to see you, happily walking across the bridge from your West End apartment, a shiny contrast to bleary-eyed, dishevelled me. Then I saw you in person today and everything changed. You were sitting on a bench by yourself in the middle of a cold, sunny Friday afternoon in English Bay, coffee in hand. You looked a little sad. I was coming home from a run and I think we recognized each other, but I didn't want to push it because you looked like you needed a rest, and maybe a hug. Proof again, I guess, that every dog has his day.