A scene

I'm on the train coming home, knitting the heel of a sock. Across from me are two young women sitting together. They might be seventeen or eighteen. One of them is holding knitting needles very awkwardly and trying to remember how to cast on. I debate going over and offering some assistance, but I decide against it; the space next to her is occupied, and it doesn't seem wise to try to teach someone to knit on a moving train when I'm getting off in just a few stops. By the time the person next to her gets up, she's figured it out; she casts on stitches awkwardly, one by one, not always sure which way to wrap the yarn around the needles. But we grin at each other when she gets that first stitch right; for a moment we are members of the same sorority.