Sometimes this city makes me shake my head in wonder

As often happens on my lunch break, this afternoon I found myself walking through the labyrinth that is the Toronto PATH system in search of food-court food. Up ahead of me, I noticed a woman's scarf gain freedom from the coat slung under her arm and fall to the floor. There was a group of three women between myself and her and I expected that one of them would pick up the wayward scarf, but instead all three stepped over it an continued on, although they certainly must have seen it fall. When I reached it I picked it up and sprinted up to the woman just as she was rounding a corner. When I said, "excuse me, you dropped your scarf" she seemed positively surprised. Her two friends looked at me with wide, almost fearful eyes until they realized that I wasn't trying to mug them, but was in fact just returning their friend's scarf. I left them to their exclamations of surprise and wonder that someone would actually be nice to a stranger.

It's times like this that make me wonder at the city I live in. I love Toronto, and I recognize that as a large city its citizens run on anonymity and individualism. But the look of shock and surprise on those women's faces made me think that they'd all lost more scarves than have had returned to them.

o( )__