Towards the end of summer when the leaves were just starting to change, I got off work early. I was working for Kinko’s Palo Alto in their Desktop Publishing Center.

I got on the train like always and rode the two hours back to San Francisco where I got off downtown. I could have taken the bus from there, but since it was a nice day, I walked.

We lived just behind the U.S. Mint on Hermann Street. I lived there with my partner and his best friend. It was kind of a tense time for us because my partner and I had been having problems. I was never sure if we were dating or not. I think he liked it that way.

So as I cross Market Street, ready to head up the steep hill to our house, I saw this little bar on the corner that I had seen a million times. It was a Karaoke bar–nowhere I would likely be caught dead in. It was aptly named “The Mint” This day, I decided to stop for a drink to brace myself for the drama I might face when I got home.

As I entered the bar, before my eyes could adjust to the darkness, I hear someone yell out, “Finally! I have been waiting all day for you to get here” I looked around to see if there was someone behind me but there wasn’t.

As my eyes adjust, I see a little old man with mousey grey hair shuffling through a stack of papers as though he was getting them ready to deliver a speech. The bartender calls out, “Aw, just ignore him. He’s harmless. He’s been scribbling on those papers all day.”

So I approached the bar which took up almost the entire space. It was a big square bar in the middle with a row of chairs all around it. Between the wall and the chairs was maybe a foot and a half which was taken up mostly by the cigarette machine and local newspapers.

It was so small that in order to use the restrooms in the back of the place, you had to have the patrons at the bar cooperate with you to lean forward as you went by.

The bartender hands me my beer and says it’s on the house on account of this guy harassing me. As I turn around, here is the guy that just a minute ago was on the other side of the bar. He shoves a stack of papers in my hand and says to me, “I have been waiting all day for you, here. I’m supposed to give you these.” He grabbed his backpack and headed to the bathroom, making everyone lean forward as he shuffled by.

I realized the guy was homeless and the bartender was sweet for putting up with him. I sat down and began reading this stack of papers and I was blown away.

It was roughly 50 life lessons or rules to live by. Handwritten. It was as though they were written for the things I was going through at the time. I can see how they apply to anyone, but at the time, it was trippy.

When I look up from the papers, I ask the bartender where the guy went. I wanted to talk to him. He didn’t know. The last he remembered, the guy shuffled off to the bathroom. Several folks at the bar mentioned that he had gone by, but hadn’t come out.

The bartender, looking angry but concerned, came around the bar and made his way to the bathroom in the back. When he opened the door, there was nobody there.

The odd thing is that people would have remembered him rustling by on his way out. I was sitting in his way between the door an the bathroom, he would have had to ask me to move. There was a small window (too small for him) and it was about 6 ft off the ground. He couldn’t have climbed through there.

The bartender looked wigged out and I didn’t know what to do or say. I finished my beer and walked the steep hill to my house on Hermann Street behind the U.S. Mint.