The Literary Choices That Can Touch the Soul

One reader finds artistic qualities in the constantly shifting array of Metro passengers' faces. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)
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Face Value

When I first came to Washington, I greatly preferred landscape paintings to portraits. But 25 years of riding Metro has made me a student of faces. On every ride, I see serious faces, sleepy faces, beautiful faces, worried faces, intense faces and faces looking off into another world. There are faces that could be in period pictures, over Elizabethan collars or under powdered wigs. Faces pensive, faces impenetrable, faces serene, all gliding along together underground.

When passing through the Gallery Place Station, I sometimes wonder whether the more interesting faces are up above in the National Portrait Gallery or down below in a long, rolling, ever-changing display.

-- Jon Mathis, Kensington

Not The Reaction He Expected

For some reason, people I run into aren't nearly as nice as, say, the typical Washingtonian. Or maybe I meet average, not exemplary, citizens.

Early one afternoon a few months ago, I stood in line at my local Wachovia. I'd lost my debit card; I could get cash only from a human teller. Complicating matters, there was only one teller. A woman was in line ahead of me. And the current customer was engaged in a loud, animated discussion -- no, an argument -- with the teller.

The customer was, I gathered, in his late 50s or early 60s and clean and articulate in a Joe Biden sort of way. He cradled an armload of papers and forms. No, he wasn't homeless, but he sounded desperate. Because I'd eavesdropped, I knew why.

He had come in to deposit a big government check. Apparently, he had briefly left to get more papers. When he returned, he couldn't find the check. He claimed that he had left it with the teller, but the teller said she didn't have it and hadn't seen it. The man didn't believe her, but, in any event, wanted her to help him get the check canceled and reissued.

I tried to help. I glanced around the floor of the bank for the check. I saw it face-down about 30 feet from the teller's window. It was easy to spot; banks have very clean floors. I went over and picked it up. It was, indeed, a big U.S. Treasury check, for well over $50,000. And it was endorsed.

"Sir, is this your check?" I politely asked.

"Uh, yes. Thanks," the man said. He took the check from my hand and returned to the teller's window. No smile. No handshake. No pat on the back. No nothing. Zilch. If anything, the man looked annoyed. Maybe I'd embarrassed him by finding the check, exonerating the teller. Who knows.

Worse, now that the man had his check, he began to conduct his business, a complex financial transaction that seemed to involve every one of the papers and forms he'd carried into the bank in his arms.

After fifteen minutes, another teller opened up a window. I got my money from her.

The first teller flashed me a big smile as I left the bank. Okay, maybe I'd made her day. But I'm thinking, next time, I leave the check on the floor.

-- Anthony E. Harris, Washington