Most days when I fetch my 8-year-old from school I arrive early, situate my car in the parking lot and pull out a book to read for a few calming minutes before, quite literally, all hell breaks loose as hundreds of elementary-aged children swarm from their hive. Depending on where I park, some days I can see around the edge of the school to a side entrance where, a few minutes before general dismissal, another bus retrieves two special needs children.

I’ve seen one of those kids off and on for years (my daughter previously attended the same school). Judging by the automated wheelchair he uses and his highly atrophied body, I’m guessing the child suffers from ALS. Always the end-of-day routine is the same: the child wheels out to the sidewalk accompanied by an adult, the bus driver walks to the rear of the bus and lowers the ramp, the child is wheeled on, locked in, up goes the ramp and another adult inside the bus pulls him in and locks him into his designated spot on the bus. The entire process takes only a moment or two at most.

The other day I was watching and the driver, a middle-aged Asian, stood as he always does at the controls of the ramp as the boy was locked in, and I found myself watching for some form of engagement, hoping I suppose that there was some form of shared humanity there. Initially I saw nothing, and my heart sank imagining that child being moved and hoisted and fastened in like just so much inanimate cargo. But then, almost imperceptibly, I saw the bus driver’s index finger gently flipping one of the child’s fingers up, over and over again, in a playful manner. The child’s face of course was expressionless, frozen as it is by the spasticity of his disease a la Stephen Hawking.

Yet we also know that the mind of Hawking is sharp – indeed, one of the world’s sharpest – and so we know that that child is cognizant of all that goes on around him; of the children screaming and laughing and chasing each other around the playground; of children giggling in class and talking of birthday parties and getting together over the weekend. We know this child, frozen, immutable, gazes out at a world of which he is a part but in which he cannot participate, and we ask whether he is ever acknowledged other than by the professional caregivers charged with that task.

And there it was, that gentle flip of the finger, the bus driver saying, “Hey you, I see you, I’m here with you, I hope you had a good day.”  A reminder to – as that old Yellow Pages ad urged – “reach out and touch someone.”