Just a Social Ramble

Discussion in 'Writers' Corner' started by skyrimed, Feb 23, 2016.

  1. I'm on the train every afternoon, and there's this man that gets off at the same stop as I do. At first I didn't really trust him, he seemed like a shady old man. But then we practically saw each other every day. And though we've never said a word to each other, I feel like I can trust him to protect me from something sudden. Whatever could happen in the city...
    The Indian man who runs the convenient store a few blocks away. He always smiles at me when I enter, and asks me how my day has been when I check out my items. I always make sure to give him a generous tip. He's nice to me, and I feel like he'd be the kind of guy who would help you stop smoking, or give you an extra pack of gum for free.
    There's this Spanish lady at the small drive-thru diner on Montrose. She always outlines her lips with charcoal and colors it in with a deep maroon. She's a curvy woman, with a mole under her eye, and she always looks like she's trying not to be tired. I don't think she ever acknowledges me as a regular, but I can feel that we do have mutual respect for each other and the neighborhood.

    I know I've been told a thousand times to never trust strangers, but how many times do you see a stranger until they are no longer a stranger to you? How many days must it take for you to smile at your neighborhood friend when you see each other on the street again? How would you ever know if something happened to your sub-acquaintance whose name you never learned?

    When I'm listening to music, and I'm walking and taking the train to and from home, there are times that I can't stop thinking. These are things that you've never really noticed until you've had a long day and your mind begins to wander.
  2. Over here we don't really talk to strangers or form connections like this. We'll make a joke when we try to squeeze past eachother on the bus or something, but I've never known anyone to form a connection with total strangers they see on a daily commute.

    It also doesn't help that most people here have the memory of a a mentally stunted goldfish and wouldn't recognise you - someone they see everyday - if their life depended on it. Seriously. You have to be the most chatty person ever to be able to do that, or old and frail. The only people the cashiers have a chat to is the old men (they seem decent enough) and women, and from what I can tell it's out of sympathy. They'll make a friendly comment to the kids, and be nice to teenagers (a group of people who steal from them every night and have used violence against them multiple times, going so far as to stab the security guard one time *this same group had been spouting racial slurs at him for months on end*). They'll be massively snotty to the adults too - one of them even helped somebody steal a £20 note off my mum and then accused her of stealing or something days later :D
  3. I take the kind, gentle words of General James Mattis to heart when dealing with strangers.
    mercenaries2009 likes this.
  4. I am the least chatty out of all people. The most I can do to say hi to someone, even if it's an uncle I haven't seen in a while, is smile. but gosh dingus dangit those darn teenagers are at it again!
  5. This is one step further in the direction of selflessness. The day we start treating people as family and not as strangers, is the day humanity will achieve total peace, the day that we will unite and emerge as one single banner. It might be a future we'll never see, but it's worth trying and making efforts to make that happen.

    The more we treat people as strangers the more we will destroy ourselves, corrupt ourselves and more selfish we will be.

    Your attitude my good sir/ma'am is noble. I wish there were more people like you in this world.
  6. I'm about to cry thank you so much. I want to be friendly to everyone I see because I believe in giving people chances to be understood, but half the time my body physically will not let me speak. I was born a writer, not a speaker, so I will spread love and acceptance through my stories and hope it'll catch on to other people.
  7. I must disagree were I live we worry of children being abducted thieves killing us for our iPhones this world is not a nice one and we will never know "peace" by trusting everyone.
  8. Maybe not trust any stranger you see on the street. But if we begin to spread happiness and generosity in even little accounts, communities could begin to warm up and we would know whether or not we can trust someone. Maybe this is why people don't like it when there's an addition to a community, because they don't know how they behave and they're not sure if they're safe to be around.
    But what I say is even when someone you know or someone you've never spoken to is being rude, kill them with kindness. What people expect from salty behavior is more salty behavior. You have the ability to assert someone and catch them off guard by passively letting them know you are a patient and understanding person.
  9. Worst thieves ever. If you're going to kill someone for a phone, at least make it a good phone. Jaysus.

    No but seriously I can't learn to trust strangers. I have been harassed by one, threatened with something along the lines of 'if you walk your dog here again I'll break its back' while they were lining up a shot at my head with a brick (I was on public property btw, every right to be there), and one time some weirdo started asking me questions about why I was buying bloodworm - he then pulls a really weird card at some point during the conversation that made me think 'okay, this guy is a definite freak' while the cashier silently giggled at his sexual comment (as far as I can remember, anyway) to a 12 year old. Luckily he left after that point. I don't know if he was joking or not, and I don't particularly care nearly 4 years on.

    The benefits of living in a run-down new town that was built to make the country look good by getting rid of Liverpool's slums, I guess.
    gladranger7 likes this.
  10. :eek:
  11. kill em with kindness? what kind of gun/knife/virus is that? lol. kindness gets people killed, so does trusting people. when u trust that someone will be playing by the rules and then u learn some nutcase decided that a mass shooting was in his copy of "the rules". if u wanna trust people, u can, I just don't think that there will be a lot said when u get robbed killed etc. I don't mean to attack u personally but the idea that people should trust each other is a sadly old and delusional one.
    sorry to bore u by writing a long comment.
  12. There's no need to question or challenge my morals, honestly. People will always be looking for a fight. I'm a humble person. I have not and will never be rude to anyone who tries to disrespect me, because I'm not the kind of person who lets that stuff get to me. If they seem violent, if they seem like the kind of person that hasn't gotten the right treatment they need, then I'll avoid them. I'm just saying I'm not going to attack anyone for any reason, because that isn't the right thing to do. Doesn't matter what anyone else does, whether they stab me or throw me out in the middle of traffic, it will not change how I act around everyone else.
    I am a defensive person. I know I'm vulnerable and I do get nervous around shady people at night time, but I have yet to encounter anyone who will actually try to fight me. God knows what I'll do by then, but that's for me to figure out on my own.
    My original point was that I somehow put in a little trust in the strangers I see more often than others. Because I know they've seen me too, and I know they have never tried to attack me or anyone else, I can trust them not to hurt me.