Being Watchful and Alert. Carol and I climbed up the stairs to the platform of the Bayfront MetroMover station coming home Friday about the time an exceedingly seedy man walked out of the elevator onto the platform. (I had seen him enter the elevator at the ground level as we started up the steps, and he concerned me a little bit, so I was looking for him when we got to the top.) He walked onto the platform ahead of us, and I saw that he had some sort of sharp instrument in his left hand.

Two MetroMover cars soon rolled up, and Carol and I walked into the second car. We prefer the second car, when there are two, because, when a two car train reaches the MetroRail station, the rear door opens exactly where we need to be to catch the stairs to the MetroRail platform at the end of our ride on the MetroMover. (When you ride public transportation like this day after day, you learn precisely where to position yourself at every step of the way to maximize convenience. Or maybe its just Carol and me. Who really knows.)

(Are you getting this? The MetroMover is a little elevated train that makes a loop in Downtown Miami. It has no operator. It usually has just one car, but sometimes two. The MetroRail is Miami's idea of a rapid transit. It is also elevated, but it is more like a real train - several cars, an operator. It has a stop about a mile from our house. We ride the MetroMover from a station near our office to the station where MetroMover and MetroRail link.)

The seedy man had walked onto that car in front of us. By force of habit, we followed him. Inside the car, I reconsidered that decision. I took Carol by the arm and we walked out of the second car and got on the first. As we got on the first and the doors were closing, two security guards came across the platform to enter the second car, the one with the seedy man. It appeared that they were going after him. But the doors closed before they got there and the train left. They didn't get him.

At the next station, Knight Center, we stopped, the doors to both cars opened, and I saw a woman walk across the platform toward the second car. I almost stepped out of our car and suggested she get on ours, but I didn't. But in just a moment, before the doors shut and the MetroMover resumed rolling, she hurried out of the second car and into our car. She said that there was a man in there with a razor blade in his hand - our seedy man.

It was hard to see into the second car from the first car, because the glass is tinted, but I keep an eye on the car anyway, as I had been doing. When we got to the next station, the seedy man got out. He glanced over at our car - its doors were open - we made eye contact, but he just continued moving to the exit turnstiles.

I wasn't alarmed. I was just very watchful.