one SST term, several students remarked about the seeming insanity of a

common occurrence. They briefly would be alone in a publicowith the driver,

sitting comfortably in the front bucket seat, when another passenger-to-be

would finger the car to a halt. Then, even though the back seat was empty, the

new rider would open the front door and pile nearly onto the lap of the

student. The assumption of some of the SSTers was that this was, at best, an

attempt at undesired physical intimacy, or, at worst, a sign of Dominican

senselessness. At the group's weekly processing session, students and leaders

sought to understand why this practice was occurring. Most students clearly

understood that for their Dominican hosts physical contact with friends or

strangers was not a disvalue, so that was one mitigating explanation. But few

had thought through the truth that emerged from the conversation:because

of traffic patterns and the dangers of exiting and entering cars, all passengers

were required to exit publicosfrom the right doors rather than onto the

roadway. That meant the person who sat on the student's lap would have

inconvenienced the publico'sfuture passengers had he entered the back seat

of the car, where he eventually would have been pressed against the driver's

side door. For him to exit the car, especially if he were going a short distance,

all of the other passengers, who by then would have filled the back seat, would

have needed to get out before he could exit. His act, then, in scrunching into

the front seat, was sensitive, appropriate, and eminently rational. The student

who brought the case to the group was bowled over. What had been

senselessness had been transformed through seeing from another

unconsidered perspective, and the chastening which came through the

revelation carried over into the remainder of her Dominican experience, as

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