My Everyday Strangers

March 23, 2005

Not counting the days I spend vegged out at home, I’d say I see 50+ people out and about. By see I mean actually see… out of their car… outside the house… at the gas station… in the store… eating at McDonald’s. Of those 50+ people, I probably speak to about half of them. Be it a simple ‘hello’, ‘thank you’, or ‘how’s it going’, at the very least. Sometimes it’s more than that. I’m going to guess that I veg out at home completely only twice a week (by completely I mean I never leave… I never open the door to my apartment). That leaves five days that I venture out into the world.

Let me do the math here…. 5 days… times 50 people… divided by half… hmm… gimmie a minute… that goes here… put that remainder over there… carry the 1…. whoa.

As it turns out I speak to at least 125 people a week. A little more math tells me that it all equals out to at least 6500 people a year. This is a rough estimate. I bet it’s actually more than 6500. Especially when you factor in the group things I encounter… work… school things I did (like graduation… classes… etc). That is *a lot* of people. That’s more people than the total population in a lot of small towns.

Why don’t I know any of these people? Why don’t I know anyone here other than my brother and the people I work with (whom I only know *at* work)? Why don’t I know anyone from school? I don’t know any of my neighbors. I don’t even know what most of them look like. They could run me over in the street and I’d think it was a complete stranger (because technically, I suppose it would be). My bed is against the wall. I bet my head is less than 6 inches from my neighbor’s head every single night when I go to bed. If the wall wasn’t there, I could reach over and poke his head in the middle of the night and say “hey… buddy… are you asleep”… or something along those lines. But I don’t know his name. I don’t know anything about him other than the fact that he is apparently opposed to electric light (I’ve never seen a light on over there… come on man… what gives? Repeat after me… lights… are… not… evil… they… are… your… friend).

I go to the same gas station many times a week for gas, drinks, food… whatever I don’t feel like driving to the grocery store for. The same people have worked there since I’ve been in this town. I don’t know any of their names. They wear name tags… and I have no idea what their names are. They recognize me and one of them even calls me by name (I’m assuming from my check card). They know what I eat… what I drink… what kind of car of I drive… what time I go to work… where I bank. But I don’t know their names.

I don’t know anyone here. I *did* have a friend here for a while that I met at work. He bailed, and since, I haven’t replaced that solitary friend with anyone else. At first, it bummed me out. Oh poor pitiful me with no friends. Boo hoo. Cry me a freakin’ river, ya big sissy ass. Now that I’ve adjusted, it doesn’t bum me out so much as it just makes me curious. I mean… I have friends in Texas. Quite a few, actually. Enough to warrant a pilgrimage back there at least once a year. So what’s different about Springfield? What did I do to make friends in Texas that I’m not doing here? What the hell is wrong with me?

Is it even me? I think the answer is a mixed one. Partially yes, it is me. But not completely.

My part in the whole thing can be broken up into a couple of different aspects of the way I operate. For one, I’m a little on the shy side. With strangers, that is. Once I get to know someone I’m anything but shy. But at first… yeah… I’m a big ol’ mess of shy. I’m also naturally wary of people… maybe even distrustful? People I don’t know are usually not to be trusted. I mean, the people I know don’t really owe me anything… why would a stranger? And I also have a hard time accepting sincerity from a stranger. I’m always convinced it’s an act… or they’re just being polite… or they’re just this… or they’re just that.

But I think my biggest problem is how I look at other people. I look at a stranger and I draw conclusions based on any number of inappropriate stereotypes and generalizations. I admit it. I do. But then again, so do most other people. I make even more assumptions when someone opens their mouth. If they say a certain thing… or talk a certain way… I go to town generalizing again. Since I’m a communicator by nature, I usually look for signs of that ability in other people. If I don’t see any, I assume they have no such ability… and therefore, aren’t of interest. I know… I know… that’s not good. But I’ve done it for so long I think it’s become second nature. I consciously tell myself to stop… and I do stop… for a moment. And just when I’m not consciously telling myself to stop, I stop stopping.

Add all of this up and it’s no wonder I don’t meet people easier. But like I said earlier… I don’t think it’s completely my doing.

I don’t think I’m the only person who does and feels the same as I do. I can’t be. What else would explain all of the daily strangers walking around the planet? All of those people that I see on a daily basis see me too. I’m not invisible. I go into that gas station and they see me. I go to the store and they see me too. I hold the door for that person at the mall, and they see me holding it. I was sitting next to *someone* at Fantastic Sams one day. Surely she saw me? Since they saw me at the counter when I went to pay, I assume the woman next to me in the waiting area saw me too.

Or did she?

Maybe she didn’t see me… because I wasn’t doing anything for or to her? They saw me at the counter because I was giving them money (sometimes I wonder if they see me when they’re cutting my hair… is it really *that* hard to cut my hair… seeing as how all they have to do is use the clippers… no scissors required). They see me at the gas station because I’m giving them money too. They saw me at the mall because I was holding the door open FOR them. I bet that woman next to me at Fantastic Sams would have seen me if I’d done something to her… like poke her in the side… or get in her face and go “blahahahahaha”. She’d see me then.

Are we too busy to know the people we see everyday? Are we too wrapped up worrying about our own lives to take a little extra time to actually talk to another person? I guess I am. Everyone else seems to be, too. Most people wouldn’t give a second thought to the strangers they see every day. I admit that I usually don’t. But think about what that says about all of us.

Thousands of potentially good people to know pass my way every year… and I don’t take the time to get to know any of them. None of them take the time to get to know me. I bet they don’t take the time to get to know each other, either. That girl that sat two seats down from me in my behavior modification class could have been the best friend I’d ever had. Maybe more. That guy that works at the gas station could listen to the same music I do… or read the same books that I do… or both. The woman at Fantastic Sams could have been my second cousin twice removed from my mom’s brother’s wife’s family… we could have arranged to car pool to the next family reunion. With no one (myself included) taking the time to speak to anyone else in the world, how do any of us ever expect to be anything but alone. I mean, ultimately, I suppose we are alone (philosophically speaking). But maybe philosophers say that because they know we’re all too self-involved to change it. Maybe there’s a force out there that science, philosophy, religion, and the other explanation-sciences don’t know about because it’s never been seen. A force called aalone (that’s a-alone… anti-alone… the opposite of alone). Maybe we’re not ultimately alone in the world and neither are we supposed to be.

But we’ll never know… because we’re all just too damn busy being alone to find out.

Posted in Human Nature, Noteworthy

Related Posts

• Stop Staring At My Tentacles
• Strangers Less Strange
• Angry At Strangers
• This I Know. This I Must Learn.
• Tripping Through Time