Complete Strangers
I was visiting Phoenix for my sister’s wedding earlier this month. I leave our hotel and start walking in the direction of a shopping area hoping to find a place to get a quick cheap haircut. I found a Great Clips and put my name on the waiting list. I sit down and start playing a game on my iPhone.
In waiting rooms I am a people watcher. Even when reading a magazine or playing with my phone I am pretty aware of the people around me. And yet even though I am aware of people I almost never talk to someone I don’t know. I wish I was more outgoing, but I guess I am just inherently shy.
A guy a little younger than me comes into Great Clips and sits a couple seats away from me. We don’t make eye contact or acknowledge each other. I notice he is wearing a blue shirt with a logo on the front that kind of looked like the Sesame Street sign. I go back to playing with my phone and pretty soon my name is called and I am under the clippers.
That afternoon I meet the other groomsmen at the tux shop where we tried on our tuxedoes. We are chatting and I notice the best man’s t-shirt: blue with a logo that reminds me of Sesame Street. I must have had a confused look on my face because he asks me what’s wrong? I was trying to remember where I saw him earlier that day. He asks me if I got my hair cut earlier that day. Finally we put it together and are amazed by the coincidence.
For some reason this encounter has stuck with me. I wonder how often I am sitting silently next to someone who I could be having a fascinating conversation with. If I struck up a conversation I wonder how long it would take to find something in common with a complete stranger. I bet it isn’t very long.
Facebook and the like have made it so easy to “make friends” without having to go through the uncomfortable tradition of meeting someone. With our mobile devices wouldn’t it be cool if we could point our phone at someone and it could give us a list of possible similarities between us? Discreetly point your phone at a stranger and it could give you a readout like:
Similarities: You are both Lutheran, enjoy science fiction, and you both own Toyotas.
Differences: Avoid talking about music, art, or politics.
Friends:You are both friends with T-dog97. You also have a friend that is connected by 2 degrees of separation.
When you start thinking about it, technology could actually make real social interactions even harder. You can’t just walk up to someone and say, “So you like Toyota’s, huh?” Kind of awkward. No, it’s probably better not to know too many details about a stranger. I guess the easiest thing to do is just to politely try to start talking to someone and hope the conversation blossoms. If not, at least you tried. It’s so easy and yet so hard.
