Strangers Makin Me Smile

I've had some lovely interactions with strangers recently. And interactions with strangers, unlike chocolate, are better when shared. Here's a few vignettes for ya.

I was on my typical commute the other day, which consists mostly of highway near downtown Asheville. Now the thing about any highway near downtown Asheville is that you’re usually stuck in traffic. If, by some miracle, you manage to escape the traffic, you have to celebrate by speeding. 

I don’t make the rules, but I do follow the rules. On this particular morning, I’m not stuck in traffic, so I am speeding. And then Shakira comes on, so then I’m speeding more. And, as tends to happen when I’m speeding on the highway near downtown Asheville, a little bit of dancing makes its way onto the scene as well. To be fair, it’s Shakira. I don't really have a choice.

I’m in the middle of a sort of Charlie Brown number, adapted for highway driving, when I look over and see the driver beside me. She’s probably mid-twenties, with sunglasses and a perfectly executed messy bun, and as luck would have it, she’s also getting down. She’s rapping, spitting lyrics at the wildflowers by the exit ramp and the open road and the one dead possum in the middle of the lane ahead. She’s very intimidating. I would not wanna be that dead possum. 

She eventually leaves me in her dust. I guess I’m not speeding that much. Just enough to freak out my father, but not enough to impress my brother. The sweet spot. 

Anyway, the rapping girl blasts past me, and I’m feeling kind of emasculated, but I scooch back into the left lane anyway. And then I see that the man on my right is grooving too. He’s an older gent, rocking with the barest of suave shoulder sways. But it’s clear the man can move. 

I begin to look around, and soon I see that we are everywhere. Us solo drivers jamming out at 8 am. I’ll admit, there are times when I’ve found this four lane highway hostile. Even lonely. But this whole time, the twisting pavement has been Asheville’s biggest dance floor. Everyone swerving and swinging and speeding and swaying as they take themselves where they need to go. 

Our big fancy machines try to trick us into taking ourselves seriously out there. But don’t be fooled. The rush hour commute is nothing but a giant silent disco. 

I’m walking past Asheville Community Theatre with a gaggle of friends when I notice a couple sitting in the rocking chairs outside the Thomas Wolf House. While I watch, the woman looks down at her phone, and the man pretty immediately takes the opportunity to pick his nose. He really goes for it, too. Rubbing his pointer finger around in there like he’s swabbing out the mouth of a choking victim. And then the man looks up, mid-swab, and sees me staring right at him. He covers it pretty quickly with a kind of prim nostril brush, you know how it’s done. The kind that attempts to convey, with posh nonchalance, “ahh, you just happened upon me dabbing at a spot of dust on the bridge of my nose.” 

But I know what I saw. And the man knows it too. So I sort of smile, because what else are you supposed to do when a grown man in a business suit accidentally entrusts you with the information that he picks his nose?

My friends and I keep walking, and I’m doing a great job looking anywhere but at the couple in the rocking chairs, and that’s when I trip. It’s kind of a spectacular fall, one of those in which your limbs dart every which way like repellent magnets. In other words it’s ugly. But I catch myself, in a feat almost as physiologically perplexing as the fall itself. And my luck doesn’t even end there! As it turns out, my friends have gotten a little ahead, what with my being distracted by the nose-picking, and the trying not to dwell on the nose-picking, etc, and so they are spared from observing my humiliating display of inept bodily comportment. In fact, I think I might have escaped without a single witness to my amateur efforts at ambulating. I cast one furtive look around, to double check I haven’t been spotted. And that’s when I see him. It’s the same man, staring straight at me. 

Not only did he see me trip. He saw me trip, and then look around to make sure no one saw me trip. And then he saw me see that he had seen. 

Now, if you ever find yourself in this situation - wherein you see a grown man pick his nose and then you see that the same man has witnessed your spectacular fall - if you ever land yourself in such as a pickle as this, which I have to think is likely, I will tell you what you need to do. What you need to do is smirk. At least, that is what the man and I opt to do. Big smirks, wide smirks, accidental and unbridled smirks. And then we sort of smile a little, and nod, like we’re promising to keep the secret of each others’ human frailty to ourselves. Then his wife looks up, and I scamper back to my friends, and we both return to the great game of pretending to be normal, functional adults. 

One day, I get off work early and my friend and I decide to go to Jeremiah’s Italian Ice on Merrimon. And my friend and I are feeling pretty silly, because we got off work early and we’re at Jeremiah’s Italian Ice on Merrimon. When my friend and I get the sillies, it’s generally good for us and bad for everyone else. In this case our victim is the poor person behind the walk up window, from whom we are demanding samples of just about every flavor on the menu. 

I manage to cut myself off at three, though it is a sacrifical concession to the demands of decorum. My friend makes no such sacrifice. They take so long, growing their collection of tiny white spoons, that they have to let several other customers cut in front of them while they deliberate. 

The person behind the register, apropos of nothing, tells us that there are technically unlimited samples, a rule that came under fire when someone once came by, sampled every flavor on the menu, and then left. 

I counted 38 flavors on the menu. 

I think the person in the story is meant to be a sort of warning, a helpful example of what not to do. My friend, though, seems to take them on as a role model. Needless to say, it becomes clear that we’re going to be there for a while. So long, in fact, that I get my ice cream before they’ve even made a decision, by which point there are three spectators watching me eat, watching my friend deliberate, and becoming rather invested in the whole thing. 

One dude, a middle aged man all on his lonesome, finally leans over to me and whispers, as if discussing a confidential matter, “what flavor did you get?”

If you’ve ever been to Jeremiah’s Italian Ice on Merrimon, you know this is a loaded question. There’s the flavor of the italian ice, but that’s swirled with froyo, which is another flavor altogether, and can, itself, be a swirl. And all that is before you even mention the cookie butter on top. Despite the complexity of the task, I jump into an explanation of my ice cream with great gusto. 

The man, bless his heart, listens to my whole monologue with rapt attention. At the close of it, he nods, looking enlightened and a little stunned. It is then my turn to ask, with no small amount of genuine curiosity, what kind of ice cream he ordered. 

That’s when I find out that the gent didn’t even order any for himself. He’s apparently the kind of saint that goes to an ice cream place just to pick up a cup for his friend in the hospital without a thought for his own sugar needs.  

He ordered lemon for his friend, but now the poor man is really fretting about whether lemon was the right choice. I do not want to tell him that I think lemon is just about the worst flavor on the menu. But, as I had been boisterously offering the same unsolicited opinion to my friend mere moments before, there is a considerable chance he already knows my thoughts on the subject. 

No matter. He has bigger problems. Namely, that he plans on leaving Jeremiah’s ice cream with nary even a sample of his own. As someone with three samples and half a double scoop under my belt, it’s hard to imagine such a plight. So I do the only decent thing you can do in such a situation. I offer him a bite of my own. 

I suppose, if you get right down to it, I am kind of expecting him to say no. It is an odd proposal. I expect myself to make it, congratulate myself on being a good person for making it, and be politely turned down. But the man calls my bluff. With a delight that suggests he’s been waiting for just such an offer, he squeals “yes, please!”

Well, now, it’s a lucky thing I have all these sample spoons. My adult sized spoon is still untouched! What felicity! So I hand it to him, and he digs in, and pronounces it “absolutely scrumptious.” And by the time my friend finally makes the misguided order of watermelon, this lovely gent and I have managed to scarf down half my cup.