Strangers

So. I was standing in the bread aisle, hating that otherwise nice "free" market for 95% of things I don't need, and I peripherally noticed an older lady (quite short) float into my left view, perusing the same. I checked the date of my honey grain (which I initially capitalized, thanks marketing demon) and without even thinking, I asked her "what day is it?" to which she replied, after a split second pause but otherwise without skipping a beat, "the 13th. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day," and like that she left to the shelter of anonymity from which she came.

Here, let's try this: the healthiness of a society can be judged according to how freely strangers speak to one another. Had this been New York, I would have been given glassy eyes and a grain of contempt. Had it been the bad part of Detroit, I could have gotten jacked. But it all happened swimmingly in my nice, unpronounceable Texas town, where the snowlike Narnia was still melting, and I was drugged up and loose from a lying non-drowsy cold medicine, jousting between thoughts of Wittgenstein and scenes from a Bill Murray comedy.