YOU HAVE JUST ARRIVED AT THE BUS STATION IN A BIG CITY. Your cousin is supposed to meet you at the gate and take you to the airport. You enter the poorly lighted, cavernous building and look around. No cousin.

It is 1:15 a.m. The passengers and driver on the bus with you have disappeared. You hurry toward the elevator and ascend. Other than a bored attendant at the wrong end of a long corridor, this area is empty, too.

You drag your suitcase along the uneven tiles of the terminal floor. Your footsteps thump under the grinding cacophony of the case’s wheels. Grind. Thump. Grind. Thump. The doors seem to be miles away. As you approach, you recoil at the greasy fingerprints on the door’s panels left by generations of derelicts and creeps.

You shoulder your way out. An odd silence greets you from the street. Your eyes drift to the brooding skyline on your left. One ominous colossus looms behind the other. Your eyes drift right. A lone taxi driver beckons you forward. A single eyebrow spans his forehead. He has sinister eyes. Deep scars are etched into his cheeks. He barks, “Nine dollars. Off the meter. Anywhere in the city.” His hands are too big for his small, muscular frame. Big enough to crush a coconut. Big enough to crush a skull. You think, “He will drive me to an abandoned pier, murder me, and steal the wallet from my cold, dead body.”

You veer away from him and walk north. You try to appear calm. You are calm. As calm as an explorer about to walk off a cliff and splatter to a horrible death in a treacherous chasm below.

At the corner, you see a sign. BUS TO AIRPORT. An arrow beside the sign points west. You turn and see another lone attendant. Like the cab driver, she beckons you forward. There is a hard, unsympathetic expression on her face, but it is a beautiful face. She is wearing a transit worker uniform and her hands are too small to crush coconuts or skulls. She is holding a clipboard.

“Airport bus?” She asks.

You nod.

“Nine dollars,” she says.

You take the money from your wallet, sigh with relief, and get onto the bus.

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary: dis·crim·i·nate. verb. 1. To mark or perceive the distinguishing or peculiar features of: recognize as being different from others.

By choosing to take a bus instead of a taxi, you have discriminated. By deciding to go with a female driver instead of a male, you have discriminated. By accompanying someone in a uniform as opposed to in plain-clothes, you have discriminated. By preferring a beautiful woman to an ugly man, you have discriminated.

Discriminating. adjective. 2. careful or fastidious in selection: DISCERNING, JUDICIOUS.