I'm riding a College Street car westbound. One of the regular operators is behind the wheel, and one of the regular homeless guys is sitting right behind the operator.

"Grace!" calls out the operator, referring to the street intersection, and "Grace!" echoes the homeless guy.

As the homeless guy gets ready to lurch off, the operator tells him, "you should go home and take a bath."

This particular homeless guy is malodorous, but by dint of being homeless, he may lack easy access to a bath or shower.

Anyway, the homeless guy bristles at this advice and tells the driver to "go fuck yourself."

"You just buggered yourself," the driver, a grandfatherly-looking sort, evenly told him.

The homeless guy, at the base of the stairs, sags and responds with an ashamed-sounding "I'm sorry."

The driver, unrelenting, tells him he won't be getting on one of his streetcars again.

After reaching the sidewalk, the homeless guy turned left and went to wherever his destiny is to take him.

I should say the driver is a pretty nice guy in other circumstances.  Late one wintery night at Spadina, he stopped the car on the west side of the intersection to let me catch it (I'd been coming north on a Spadina car and had been hustling to catch the departing westbound College car, but wasn't quick enough). I can guarantee you that 99 out of 100 TTC operators wouldn't do that.

I hope he relents on the homeless guy, but maybe there's history of bad relations there.

I'm at the Yonge and Bloor TTC station last night, waiting for a southbound subway train.

One materializes, but honks its horn and keeping moving through the station without stopping.

After it disappears in the tunnel, some guy approaches me.

"Am I crazy, or did a train just go through here without stopping?" he asked me.

"There was no train," I told him.

And then I walked away.