Don't Talk to Strangers

I’m a pretty intuitive person.  Maybe it’s the storyteller in me, but I love to listen to other people’s conversations.  I think it might drive some of my friends nuts that I’m almost always double listening, but I can’t help it.  I take the way a person holds themselves, the way a stranger’s mouth wraps around her words, the silent messages she sends with her eyes, hands, body, and the tales she chooses to tell out-loud and I wrap it all into a story; an existence that I believe I’ve cracked in five minutes or less. 

I guess some people would call this being judgmental.  But trust me, the stories I conjure up aren’t always bad.  Granted, I prefer the ones where I determine someone is having an affair or I overhear bits and pieces of domestic spat and I determine in a matter of moments whose side I’m taking and why.  I’ve probably watched too much television in my lifetime. 

But I also decide lots of wonderful things about people all the time.  Like when I meet someone and I can just tell between the way they hang their laughter at the end of a sentence and the way their eyes light up when they tell a story that I’m going to love them.  Or when an accent touches my heart—a deep, southern accent with long drawn-out vowels and indiscernible consonants.  Reminds me of home.

Perhaps I notice these people because I genuinely like people.  I like the mess they make.  Even when life is riddled with despair and one piece of bad luck after another, people still do incredible things.  Really beautiful, poignant things still happen.  And even when it’s not pretty, it is often funny, instead.

I think it might be why I like kids so much.  Kids are just like adults, minus the learned traits of bitterness, political correctness, and racism.  Have you ever spent much time on a playground?  Have you ever watched the way these little people interact, before they’ve been taught not to like someone for the way they look or before they know its inappropriate to make honest, bold statements like: “You’re fat in your belly” or “Why do you have hairs in your nose?”  Once we’re grown up, we learn to only discuss such matters as fat bellies and nose hairs in doctor’s offices or in closed bedroom doors once we’ve secured the person to whom we’re about to disclose such outrageously controversial information through marriage vows (or the promise of such vows).

It’s wonderful.  Children go around playing whatever game comes to mind, regardless of how absurd, with whomever they find available for the game, making up rules as they go and proudly, boldly declaring statements that have a high chance of being entirely false.  They don’t hold back on what they want—what they like and don’t like and what they actually want to do.  And when proven wrong, they giggle at the irony (even though they can’t define that word just yet).  Or they spontaneously burst into tears, which is perhaps an even more honest response to the shit life hands you.  How many times a day would you love to either a) laugh at something inappropriate until you fall in the floor or b) burst into irrational, big, fat, salty tears over something silly?  I’d average in at about 15 times, most likely.  On a good day.

But people are funny.  I love the way we all layer in on top of each other.  I find it fascinating in places where there are no barriers—no restrictions on the kinds of people that travel to and from a place.  Places like grocery stores, hospitals, train stations, and airports.  At some point, we all gotta use these places.  Everyone from the schizophrenic middle-aged man to the elderly couple to the emo tween.  People from all walks of life uncomfortably settle in with each other, standing in lines or clumps waiting for something to happen.   And this is when the people listening is at an all-time premium.  These spaces make some people so uncomfortable that they’ll say and do ridiculous things, sheerly out of nervous discomfort.

Recently I’ve spent some time in airports and hospitals, and each time I’ve been struck by this same idea.  We’ve created all these spaces in our lives where we’re surrounded by the people who make us feel most comfortable.  We choose where we live, where we eat, where we work, where we go to the bar or out dancing.  It’s pretty unlikely that we’ll consciously choose a place for any of these activities that makes us uncomfortable—unless your yogi has told you to do it as a part of some bizarre meditative practice. 

So when we get into these spaces where we didn’t choose our company, some people flip out.  Some people carefully mask it with fake smiles and short, artificial small talk.  Some people I think are truly immune; unmoved by such shifts, perhaps because they’ve spent too much time in spaces like this, or perhaps because they simply don’t care.  But others are visibly uncomfortable.  Looking around the room casting glares and judgments, holding nothing back from their cold stares.

Coming back from Charlotte several weeks ago, I was standing in baggage claim in the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, I was up to my usual shenanigans.  Traveling alone is perhaps the best opportunity for listening to other people’s conversations.  I’m not distracted by trying to listen to the conversation I’m actually in—I can just listen, unabashedly, to others.

The baggage claim is taking a very long time.  I steal a quick glance around the room.

The couple I sat next to was returning from a vacation in the Caribbean.  They couldn’t stop touching each other.  They were older and so in love.  It was so nice to see an older couple like this clearly still loving life and confident that they’d made all the right choices along the way (even though I’m sure they didn’t always feel right at the time). 

A young girl in her early twenties, far too over-dressed for flying, was on her way home to see someone for the first time in a while.  Maybe from college?  Maybe she ran away to join the circus and was trying to return, looking freshly dressed, so that they’d all say, “You look amazing!  The circus did wonders for you!”  She fidgeted in her high heels and kept looking at her cell phone.  Perhaps wishing someone would call her.

There was a newlywed couple, so young and so J.Crew pretty.  They were fidgeting with their backpacks, practically just unloaded from last semester before being filled up for their honeymoon, nervously touching their new rings.  You could almost sense the fear they had about coming back home and giving this “just married” thing a go. 

An older, upper-class couple stood uncomfortably towards the back, hoping no one would look at them or worse, touch them.   They had their matching monogrammed totes between their legs and she clutched onto her Coach satchel like it was rare water in the Sahara.

A young man stood eagerly by the belt, unashamed to have his self-help-genre book How to Win Friends and Influence People tucked under his arm.  He rocked back and forth on his practical, black loafers.  I was pegging him as a young store manager of some corporate chain with aspirations of getting an MBA and being a CEO.   

The unfit mother of three fed her kids a happy meal, her loud, whining kids who needed anything but high-fructose corn syrup, salt, and fatty fried food.  She loudly asked them to shut-up when they started crying and the older, upper-class couple physically turned their bodies away while shaking their heads quite visibly.

A kind, middle-aged woman stood near me.  We chatted about how long it was taking and how miserable it is to fly these days.  She had a soft face and a sweet voice.  I assumed she was a nurse or maybe a teacher.  Or maybe the really nice administrative assistant at an attorney’s office.  No ring.  I’m guessing no kids.

This.  This right here.  Is just a five minute wait at a baggage claim.  Such a small part of a day but with hundreds of interactions, unspoken words, and physical exchanges.  So much to learn about the world around us in just five minutes with strangers.

I laugh inside because I think how many times a day we navigate spaces like this.  And how we teach our children to become indifferent.  To be cautious of strangers and to stay alert.  To place our monogrammed totes between our knees and hold onto our purses with death grip.  How we teach that it's rude to eavesdrop and to stare.  How we teach not to point or laugh.  Or to be honest with the things we really think.


I laugh, uncomfortably, because our purpose in these messages isn't evil.  We want to teach our children about compassion and acceptance and how not to be cruel, but unintentionally we teach another kind of cruelty.  By creating rules for unruly spaces.