Interactions

A blessing and a curse to my children, I love talking to people I’ve never met before. Potential friends, I consider them.

I recognize the genetic roots behind this. Dad used to make me crazy when we’d stop for gas when I was a child.

“You stay in the car, Ginnie. I’ll run in and pay real quick.”

Half an hour later he’d run back out.

“I got to talking.”

Then he’d have a story.

“That cashier says he got thrown from a horse last week and…”

Sounds familiar, children of mine?

I love these connections to potential friends.

In just the last two weeks I’ve learned about a professional laundress’ favorite laundry booster. (Awesome! No, literally. It’s called “Awesome.”)

I talked about silicone wedding rings with another patron at a local brewery.

I learned that our local magazine seller just couldn’t take the heat of the last few days so he took some time off.

My favorite stranger story was sitting next to the elderly woman on the bus in San Francisco who tried to learn to drive after her husband died.

After she drove into a brick wall, she hung up her keys.

My how we laughed, she and I.

I’m creating this post as a repository for these stories. I’ll be able to look back on them and remember the joy of brushing up against another person’s life and feeling those connections.

Brief Postscript: When Yessa and I picked up the bigs, Yessa chose to stay in the car. As I was heading up to the school Yessa called out, “Please don’t talk to people.”

History does repeat itself. 😉

October 19, 2018

Yessa and I were filling up the tank on the “5” at Kroger. A young Black man pulled into the pump next to mine in a silvery sleek BMW.

I love to drive and that car looked FUN to drive.

I leaned over to look at him in the passenger window. (The day is so beautiful all the windows were down.)

“I’ll be that’s fun to drive, isn’t it?” I asked with a trace of envy in my voice.

He got such a huge grin on his face.

“Yes, yes it is.”

“I’ll think of it as I’m tooling around town in my mini-van,” I said, making a driving motion with my hands.

“Well, you know, a car is just to get you from place to place. So a mini-van’s fine.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “It works just fine, but that looks pretty zippy zoomy.”

Then, later at Publix where I had to run to get the items I forgot at the first grocery store.

I was in the self-check aisle, and out of the corner of my eye, before I had finished bagging up, I saw a cart pull up.

I started to try and hurry, and immediately dropped my recent, so I stacked up my items and pushed the cart out of the way so the person could get started and I wouldn’t feel rushed as I bagged up.

I glanced over to see who it was, and it was a tall white woman. She immediately apologized, “I didn’t realize you hadn’t bagged up. I didn’t want you to feel rushed. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not a problem,” I replied. “I started to try and hurry, and immediately dropped my receipt, so I just moved over.”

“You know,” she said, “My high school Spanish teacher taught me a phrase, ‘I’m going slowly because I’m in a hurry.’ I always thought that was so perfect.”

We wished each other a lovely day and off I went.