On the streetcar someone is speaking French. The driver asks, “Montreal?” To which the man laughs in response and asks a question of his own, “does this go down to Dundas?” With the answer he gets off, sure that he’s lost himself.

After him an elderly couple walks in. The man let’s the woman sit first near the window and the young couple near the back takes no notice, too busy making plans of their own when all the plans they need to make are in front of them.

There’s a baby wailing, and a toddler looking out the window, his eyes wide with wonder at the street passing by him. His parents explain in rapid Mandarin the scenery. “This is Chinatown,” I would imagine them say, while hushing the baby, “and we’re on a streetcar. We went to eat at that restaurant, remember?” The toddler can’t recollect, and instead says, “streetcar! Look!” as another streetcar passes by him.

A stranger beside the family chuckles, and makes faces at the baby. The baby is fat and stops wailing for a moment, mesmerized by the strangers attempt at making friends with it.

Outside, pigeons eat crumbs on the floor, squirrels attack people and seagulls loom around on street poles so that their feces fall on innocent pedestrians. Even they’re interesting to look at. It’s a concrete, messy, sticky jungle that’s easy to ignore and easy to pass by, unseen.

But what of it? Should we turn a blind eye to it or be mesmerized by it? Should the streetcar ride just be like all the others, or should we take notice of the people around us? What stories do they have to tell? Perhaps maybe we’re all content to just happy strangers living side by side.