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I hopped a train yesterday to go visit my grandbaby, thinking I would use the time aboard to get some work done. Instead, I met Matt. We first struck up a conversation while waiting on the platform, and it continued when we ended up sitting together on board. Matt is 18 and was headed to Tampa to visit a dad he hadn’t seen in some years. He seemed a bit nervous about that. This fall, he will become a Marine, train for the infantry and eventually head to either Afghanistan or Iraq. He did not seem at all nervous about that. He showed me his new tattoo – a map of the world, where he will later mark each spot where the military takes him. He showed me pictures of a little girl in Nicaragua whose parents were killed by masked militia (he showed me photos he had taken of them, too – the murderous masked militia). Twice a year, for many years, Matt has traveled to Nicaragua on “Beautiful Feet” missions to help this little girl and others like her. The group is called Beautiful Feet because the founder, a visiting surfer, wanted to provide shoes for these barefoot children who live in garbage dumps and must scavenge for survival over broken glass, sharp metal and rusty nails. Matt has sponsored this one little girl for 4 years (did I mention he is 18?) and is now working on bringing her to the states to live with his family. Matt’s a radical blader. He has broken some bones skating, including a dislocated forearm, which he and his mates snapped back into place on the spot. It still pops out occasionally, though – he showed me! He told me he and his siblings were home-schooled by his mother, and although I’ll never meet her, I hope she knows she has done herself proud. He told me about his plans to go “survival” camping with a friend this summer in the Smokey Mountains, to help prepare themselves for what awaits them in Camp Lejeune. As we talked, I thought of how often I have groused about the millennials I have worked with – their sense of entitlement and their (non)work ethic, and I reminded myself that generalizations never work, because you always will find exceptions to the rule. (Besides, he showed me things I didn’t know I could do with my phone —always a huge plus of millennials!). We went in search of the snack car together, and I laughed at this tough-as-nails skater teen/soon-to-be-Marine when passing through the train links scared him. He laughed at me when I got stuck in one of the doors that closed too quickly, with my hands full and trying not to spill my coffee as he came to free me. Eventually, we fell into our own separate smartphone-fueled reveries. (Did you know that Amtrak seats open like full recliners — almost better than first-class seats on a plane!) When we finally got to Tampa we shook hands, and that bright young man wished this old granny a fun weekend with the baby. I wished him a safe and successful future deployment. I hope he comes back from his tour of duty with body, mind and soul intact, because I am certain he will do good — maybe even great — things with his life. As I walked away from the platform, I glanced back to see Matt in the welcoming embrace of the father who had grown distant for whatever reason, and it left me with a smile. If life were a video game, I think these random, unexpected, fleeting sort of connections would be like the little treasure coins along the path – you gobble them up and, cha-ching!, you are suddenly fortified and somehow richer. The future seems brighter when I meet young people like Matt. I’ll have to make up for the work that I missed, but what a great trade-off it was!