Talking to strangers

I’ve long had a propensity for chatting up strangers. I don’t recall being that way as a boy or young man, although I’d have to rely on old friends to find the truth of that statement. I believe I recall being more reticent up until about twenty or so years ago.

It may have been my daughters who brought about my late garrulousness (garulocity?). Spend enough time as one of the two or three bored-to-tears chaperones at your nth class outing and you’ll happily strike up a conversation with a car fender. Ironically, although they were directly invested in the causal chain that led to my penchant for engaging, Daughters One and also Two frequently find my friendliness uncool, even inappropriately so.

(Sigh!)

So, it is probably just as well that neither of them was with me in Terminal 2 at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport yesterday afternoon, because I was in a decidedly chatty mood. I was capitalizing on the confluence of an early airport arrival and an empty work carrel to further my writing career when a young woman sat down next to me and in the course of figuring out outlet-sharing, we got to talking.

Don’t ask me the youngster’s name, because I never asked, the exchange of names being utterly irrelevant to our conversation.  But we shared a delightful half hour during which I learned that she is almost the same age as One, works in stock brokerage, was on her way to Seattle to visit family and friends and is considering a relocation to the Northwest. She LOVES teaching (she is her company’s corporate trainer) so of course, we had that to talk about.

She is also something of an outdoors enthusiast, so I gave her my card with the name of a young woman with whom I work who is a certified rafting guide – the idea being that if she sends me an e-mail, I’ll put them in touch.

I can’t say I’ll ever hear from her but if I do, I will indeed introduce her to my young friend Diana.

I quite enjoyed talking to her and I believe the enjoyment was mutual.

During a week when there is so much negative foofaral going around in the news, it was nice to just unplug and engage with another friendly human being, without agenda or expectation, attraction, repulsion, or fear of rejection. I may or may not incorporate part of my mental image of her in one of the characters in my writing. But of course, whether I do or don’t the experience will stay with me and it all comes out somewhere.

What a lovely encounter! And now, back to work.