Today, on the train, a young kid offered me his seat. He was wearing a Redskins jersey and khaki shorts with his hair cut short. "Normal". I'd been careening my head around to see if there was an open seat and had found none. Then he sprung off the gold vinyl bench and told me I could sit down because he felt like standing. He must've been 16 or 17. Eighteen at the most.

I sat down and immediately started crying. Chivalry is not dead, even in the young.

A couple of minutes later I listened while two teenage girls (one of them wearing a flowing blue dress with black palm trees on it) studied for a vocabulary quiz. They were discussing the difference between "empathy" and "apathy".