Thread by @jeremyfaust

On this day of great anxiety, I thought I'd share a little personal story to lighten the mood.

It's about what is right with people both here, and I suspect everywhere.

(Hopefully someone can find the hero of this story and thank him, a couple decades later!)

Here we go!
🧵1/

I was 20.

I had just arrived back to San Francisco for summer vacation.

This story happened after my first day working in Jonathan Weissman's @Jswlab lab at @UCSF.

We were studying how proteins fold (eventually my work ended up as an "acknowledgement" in the Cell paper below.

I'm still a little pissed at Jonathan for this.

I should've been an author! Come on, brother!

cell.com/fulltext/S0092…).

But we digress.

ANYWHO...

I'm driving my mom's volvo wagon, headed north on Stanyon onto Geary. Both lanes force you to veer left.

I'm in the left lane, but once I'm in the intersection, I realize I gotta be in the right lane so I can turn immediately on to Parker street. (See diagram)

So midway through the intersection, I float towards the right lane so I can make the right turn.

As I do this, I see in my blind spot a guy just *peeling off of his motorcycle* to avoid me running into him.

It looked something a stunt double would do in a movie. (see below).

I see him tumble on the pavement and roll with the momentum. Again, very stunt double-esque.

His bike careens towards the sidewalk and comes to a stop on its side.

The guy also comes to a stop, somehow sitting up, both knees bent, but head down, still, and looking lifeless.

"Holy sh*t, oh no, oh no, oh no," I'm thinking.

Time slows down.

I manage to pull the car over and get out.

I'm walking towards him (and I am freaked out to say the least) and I say "Are you ok?! I am so sorry that was totally my fault!)

The guy does not move or react.

He's just sitting there, but looking dead.

"Are you ok?" I say again.

Another long pause.

Then finally, "Yeah. I think I'm good....

I'm just taking inventory," he says.

He starts to move a bit, and eventually stands up, removes his helmet.

He looked pretty unscathed. He was wearing a motorcycle suit and so he didn't even break skin.

He starts walking around a bit.

I'm apologizing profusely. I hadn't seen him and it's my first day back in the city and I just was driving home from UCSF and blahblah how sorry I was.

He asks what I'm studying there (I think he said he worked there too, or used to, but now I can't exactly remember).

Assessing the bike, he points out that there's a broken handle.

I notice some other damage, including a scrape or two and a dent.

It'll need some body work.

I immediately go into damage control. "I'll pay for the damage, but maybe it's better if we don't go through our insurance companies?"

He says "it's really just the broken handle. The rest of the damage was actually already there so I'm not going to try to blame you for that"

Woah.

This guy could have had me believing I caused other damage, but instead he was honest about the fact that I'd only caused a little bit of it.

An ambulance arrives. They check him out but he declines their services.

He takes down my address.

I wait for the other shoe to drop.

A few weeks later, I get a letter in the mail, handwritten from him.

The letter says that I caused something like $163 in damage, and that he suffered no bodily or mental injury.

He writes, "I appreciate the fact that you didn't hit and run, you owned up to your mistake, and stuck around to make sure I was ok."

But he does not stop there...

He adds, "Just so you don't worry about this anymore, I am stating here that upon receipt and deposit of a check for $163, I will consider this matter closed, and will not pursue any further legal action. Best of luck to you. Sincerely, Glenn Yamamoto"

(I am 90% that's his name)

I was blown away.

This guy could have gotten several hundred dollars more out of me, but he was too honest for that.

And he intuited that a scared 20 year old kid and I would actually worry that even after paying the $163, he'd somehow decide to sue me for some other ailment.

(Wow was he was right about that. I was totally wigging out. This is the downside of having a father who is an attorney and a brother who was in law school at the time).

And that was it.

I never heard from him again.

That's how the story ends.

Life went on.

20 years later, though, the honesty, maturity, generosity of spirit, and empathy, he showed me that day--all while being the victim!--remains with me.

In the end I think this is a story about the kindness people demonstrate if only we admit our mistakes and own up to them fully.

So if anyone knows Glenn, tell him hi, thanks for his approach to life, and that I've paid it forward to many other people since.

That's it!

/fin.