Sometimes you meet the most fascinating people — in the strangest situations.

Exhibit #1: The 75 year old man i met on the uptown #3 on Friday night.

He pushed his way onto the train — along with me — and when a person behind us got caught in the doors and pulled himself back out, said, “I guess he didn’t want to ride with the common herd.”

You have to be open to experience and I was coming from band practice and I was in a good mood so I responded and we were off.

It turns out he has seven kids (by different mothers) and one of the things he said to his daughter was, “You’re never too young to die””

She used to tease him about all the things like that he said to her.

She died 3 weeks before her 19th birthday.

And like a good father he whipped out his wallet and showed me her picture.

She was a beautiful young woman.

And this is where we started talking about God. (Coincidentally, the same day, it was released that Mother Teresa even had doubts about God’s existence.)

The man’s birthday is on September 3rd and he wished my a happy holiday (for what I’m not sure — maybe the weekend?).

He said he’s never late to work and he’s never taken a day off work when he wasn’t sick (and he doesn’t get sick).

And that was our brief, yet poignent conversation heading uptown on a crowded subway on a summer’s Friday night.