Overstep

So I had this kind of revelation today, on the bus.
We were all sitting there, tired because of the standardized test that we had just taken, which pretty much melted our brains entirely. We were heading to orchestra at that point, and I was clutching my enormous puffy cello case like some sort of life raft. It was a short bus and it was the 3. The 3 is what I would classify as a shifty bus. It's not a naive commuter bus. It travels downtown every fifteen minutes, transporting everyone from blue-tooth chatting lawyers to rather dapper hobos.
Anyway, we were sitting there, kind of silent, and this man leaning in the corners, asks loudly.
"That a violin?"
We get this a lot. Which is understandable. We're downtown lugging around these ridiculously shaped parcels, trying to keep our balance. It only follows that we're going to get questioned.
"Yes," replies the girl to my left, quietly. People don't generally talk to people beyond their own party. It just singles you out. She's silently freaking out. But she's handling it well.
"My sister used to play violin in the sixth grade.I just play the harmonica and..." He mumbled something else after, but none of us heard what he said. There was obviously something up. He turned to me.
"And is that a guitar?" he asked
"Actually, it's a cello" I replied, small. I should say more, but it's awkward, and I know that you don't talk to strangers.
"Oh," he said, and then mimed striking a bow against the fingerboard of an imaginary cello, his left finger wiggling notes.
"Yep." There was more silence, and my little group exchanged that look, like, don't let this devolve into anything more, because we were brought up with stranger danger. When a dirty man with slurred words starts talking to you on a bus, when no one else will, the warning signs inside your head start flashing up.
He left the bus at the next stop without any more conversation. They all exhaled together and there was this general murmuring of "That was kind of weird."

This sort of thing happens all the time in the city. It's kind of commonplace. And the strangest thing about it is the kind of kinship I feel with those crazy bus people. The ache in my heart when we all unanimously sigh, "Freaky". Because, to a certain degree, I grew up with that sort of reaction with some of my peers. Obviously, none of them considered an 5 foot girl a physical threat, but I too got the "You're alien" look. I don't think it was traditionally a malignant thing, just kind of an instinct. But I would get it always when I was too loud or too excited, or I wore some ridiculous long dress to school. A flash of it, that made me stop and stutter, and wonder where I'd overstepped.
I'm not writing a pity post here, not trying to blame my peers for some blank stares, but I just had this unmistakable sympathy for that man on the bus today. And I wanted to say,
"Yeah, I play the cello. I love it." or "Does your sister still play?" or "What other instrument do you play." Something to let him know, I guess, that it is okay to overstep, sometimes.
But I didn't.
Because people just don't talk on buses.