Interactions

People are fascinating. They just make me smile sometimes. In the past two days I’ve had two utterly bizarre interactions that have left me somewhat confused and practically laughing with amusement at the same time. I always like people-watching, but sometimes it’s also fun to be a part of the action, so I choose to play along with people who approach me, just to see what will come of it.

Yesterday I was eating my lunch in the cafeteria, reading a book, when two women approached me with clipboards and asked if I would participate in a quick survey. I said sure, why not. Sometimes I ask what the survey is about before I agree, but this time I didn’t. They settled in opposite me at the table (how long is this short survey? I wondered) and started asking me questions, like “What is the one thing in your life you want to make absolutely sure you do before you die?” I replied, “Stay happy.” I had to give three adjectives to describe my life, then describe my “spiritual background,” to say whether or not I believed in heaven and hell, and how I thought people become Christians. The last question was, “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your desire to know God personally?” When they were done I asked what the survey was for, and they replied that they were Christians, and that Jesus Christ had made a difference in their lives, and they just wanted to talk to other people and see how other people felt about God and religion. The woman who had been asking the questions told me, “I look at your goal to ‘stay happy,’ and that really doesn’t seem like a worthy goal to me.” Well, wouldn’t you want to stay happy your whole life? I just thought the whole thing was rather strange – they weren’t preaching to me or anything (though they did offer me a book on Jesus, which I politely declined), but they obviously didn’t approve of my nature-based spirituality and my complete lack of desire to know God personally. They got up and left and I just smiled and went back to my book. The interaction didn’t hurt me at all, but maybe it gave them something to think about.

My other amusing interaction occurred on the bus this morning. I got on and sat in an empty seat next to a young man, probably in his late teens – very early twenties. I intended to sit down, get out my environmental ethics book, and read on the way to school, but he had a different idea. He shifted around in his seat to face me, asked my name, and proceeded to talk to me the entire trip. It wasn’t threatening or anything, though it was totally out of the blue and felt odd for a complete stranger to be asking me all sorts of random questions about what I did, what I studied, what kind of music I listened to, and the like. At one point, I think he was gearing up to ask me to a concert, but I headed that one off pretty quickly. I spent the ride trying to be polite but not too encouraging, and disembarked thankfully. As I crossed the street I just started smiling with amusement, thinking, “Wow, I’ve just been totally hit on by a random guy on the bus. How funny!”

I guess sometimes it’s good to give other people somebody to people-watch. :)