Why You Should Talk to Strangers

Why You Should Talk to Strangers

Maybe I should be including a warning here..."Warning: don't leave this journal entry open on your browser for young kids to see. Mutinous idea at play".  But I suppose that'd be highly hypocritical if the super sponges under my care are taken into consideration.  They've tailed me their entire respective 2 and 5 years, absorbing the experience of engaging with strangers rather candidly.  

We just gallivanted in Siesta Key for our yearly week off from farming.  The intentions were simply to sunbathe and to let the kids' beach and pool dreams come to life.  From day to day we would brew a pot of coffee in the morning, eat, sunbathe, play, chase some seagulls (Jack), swim and towel off in time to let our heads hit the pillow.  With no social agenda, our guards were down...a rather relaxing and relieving way to spend a week after pushing through fall on the farm.  

One particular morning we changed our routine and discovered the independent bookstore just off the key in Sarasota.  The shop drips with just about as much charm as that one "around the corner", save for a 30-something spunky Meg Ryan day dreaming behind the counter.  There was an endless array of 'staff picks', each with a love note describing the beauty in its prose.  And then there was the childrens' section with none of the mindless books, and all of the books laden with whimsical illustrations.  One such book was showcased in the front of the store with a kangaroo and a koala hand in hand (claw in claw?).  A couple of impassioned book worms genially hosted all of us who wandered in.

Onto caffeination station.  A few new books under our arms, we found our way to a coffee shop two blocks down and got the kids settled out front at a kid-sized table for two with banana bread and freshly steamed cocoa.  Rich and I seem to get the most private one-on-one time when May and Jack have just been served a treat. And so we stood aside, sipping our coffees and looking each other deeply in the eyes for our precious five minutes ;).  A woman settling in a few tables down behind her lap top and with a tangible conviction to get a job done, complimented us on the kids.  Figuring it was just a fleeting moment, I appreciated her kindness and assumed her momentum would see her back to her chair and to work.

Instead the three of us slipped into easy conversation, indicative of kindred spirits.  We talked about kids...hers young adults and fledging, and ours comically looking like adults having a coffee out in the city together...until they betrayed themselves and sipped cocoa from their paper cups with two hands.  In the thick of our chat, we came to find out that this woman was in town to wrap up her book tour.  She was scheduled to read her children's book (which happens to have a kangaroo and a koala claw-in-claw on the cover) at the independent bookstore two blocks down.  I may or not have tucked Santa Jaws and The 12 Cats of Christmas further under my arm when we became aware of who we were talking to.  

And so, the next morning, our last day before hopping a plane to Ohio, we returned to the book shop, purchased a final book: A is for Always, and experienced the magic of an author reading her own work, with coloring and cookies for the kids afterward, and a rather engaging dialogue for the rest of us.  The kids got to meet a woman who, like Jack, had once been 2 years old, then 5, then learned how to read and write, embarked on life, found inspiration in her experiences, and among other accomplishments, wrote a memoir, got it published, wrote a children's book, got IT published, and then sat down at their table to sign a copy for them.  What an unbelievable example of what a person is capable of! All the places you can go...

The day before I had just been sipping my coffee, enjoying some quiet with Rich, while internally scheming...the perpetual mothering game plan: should we try to head Jack in for a nap next or oblige the kids and head to the beach?...when a stranger interrupted my stream of consciousness and galvanized the lot of us with her story and good conversation.  That interaction changed the course of the tail end of our trip, but more importantly really inspired both Rich and me at the start of our reflective season...when we have time to think and dream and play with ideas.  One such idea is to scratch the increasingly more prominent itch I've had to pursue writing.  And what a nice little kick in the pants from the universe to meet Linda, who encouraged me to do so.  


Talking with strangers is a gamble.  However, I attribute the fact that we are able to make a living farming to the willingness and the pleasure taken in those interactions.  It's not the agricultural know-how or the trade skills we have picked up in our years doing the job...in fact we have met growers who have the goods but struggle to sell them due to competition with the cheap, commercially farmed alternatives, or peers who are more established in the community.  In a business which relies on the relationship between producer and consumer, I'd say that embracing strangers is a prerequisite.

It's so lovely that a chance encounter with someone who can ignite a flame in you or at least distract you from your train of thought, is a possibility anytime.  Though we all need to retreat into the solace of our shells regularly, we are largely social beings who feed off of each other's energy like plants do the sun's.  I'll wager that the odds are in favor of the socialite...and that more good comes from coming out of your shell than holing up in it.  That bet is backed by my need to believe that humans are inherently good...and by the 5:1 odds I seem to have of something good coming from opening that door, versus something bad.  

Once our kids have reached the age of reason, or perhaps have more of their wits about them than that, I'll welcome them to feast their eyes on the incendiary suggestion I made to engage with strangers.  Once you do, you've acknowledged them as another of our species, no longer a 'stranger', who by the connotation of the word stranger itself, is not to be trusted.  And in that 'stranger' is a person with the potential to be an excellent conversationalist, even a friend, or maybe just a soul crossing your path who leaves you with an interesting story to tell.  Just don't take candy from them ;).