CANDID

It’s amazing to think that there are so many people on this world, all thinking their own thoughts, whom we’ve never spoken too. The people on the bus are all going somewhere, maybe to a job interview or a party. Maybe the girl studying in the psych building just spent all night comforting a friend after a bad break-up. Maybe the man on his laptop in the Armstrong living room is trying to find his friend a birthday present.

 

There are more than seven billion people on the planet, who all want to do something with their lives. There are fifteen thousand of those people on the Oxford Campus. Every single person has a name, an idea, a voice in this world, an entire world I’ve never seen or even glimpsed. Or even tried to glimpse.

 

This occurred to me in my solitary corner of Pacific Rim, swallowing as much Bang Bang Chicken as I could before heading back to my dorm to study. It was a secluded corner of the restaurant, behind where the doors jut into the building, surrounded by windows and counters. I usually eat there; it’s a quiet spot.

There were at least a dozen others in the room with me. Most had stir-fry. About half were by themselves, eyes glued to their food or their phones, or something distracting. 

 

Suddenly I found myself wondering why I was in my usual corner, and they were in theirs. Were we all so afraid to talk to one another? I polished off my salad and headed home, a kernel of an idea stuck in my head.

 

I stood in the Armstrong dining room with a slice of mashed potato pizza, feeling sick to my stomach for a variety of reasons. Oddly enough, those reasons had little to do with my choice of mashed potato pizza. It was more because I was staring at a crowd of people, milling through the dining room like ants, with the dull roar of a hundred conversations buzzing in my ears. The crooked rows of tables spread unevenly through the room, almost all full to capacity with chattering people, strangers.

 

I started going through my spiel as I meandered through the dining room, under the awning that housed the fake-Chipotle. ‘Hello,’ I pictured myself saying, ‘may I sit with you? It’s for an English class.’ It never sounded that good in my head. I took a deep breath, and walked toward a blonde girl eating an enchilada.

 

 

Jessica’s foolproof guide to eating with a stranger:

 

1. Do not approach anyone doing homework. If they’re eating while doing homework, it’s probably important.

2. Do not approach groups of people, unless you’re interested in third-wheeling friendships. Not fun.

3. Check if they’re using a Bluetooth. Please check if they’re using Bluetooth.

 

 

“Hello,” I said, giving her a smile honed through years of fast food cashiering. “Would you mind if I sat with you? It’s for an English project.”

 

She blinked up at me mid-bite, surprised. She swallowed, and said in a thick accent, “I am sorry, I have five minutes until I go to class.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Addendum to the previous statement:

 

It’s not actually foolproof.

 

“You can still sit if you’d like,” she told me.

 

“No, that’s fine, have a nice day.” I retreated with a few of my favorite swear works toward the large television mounted high above the stir-fry place. It crossed my mind that this was a sign from heaven that I was doomed to fail. But I figured no one in heaven would care that much about my English paper, so I resumed my hunt.

 

A few tables away was a blond boy, eating a box of pasta and texting. I approached slowly, trying to cross my fingers while still holding my pizza. “Hello.”

 

He looked up. “Hello?”

 

“Hi. I’m trying to do a project where I sit with a stranger for lunch. Would you mind if I sit with you?”

 

Immediately, he grinned. “Yeah, sure.”

 

“Oh.” As it turned out, success was scarier than failure. I fell sideways into the seat and set down my pizza.

 

His name was Reid. We shook hands, because I wasn’t sure what else to do to introduce myself. I sat back, and began trying to recite my pre-written icebreakers.

 

 

Pre-Written Ice Breakers:

So where are you from?

What year are you?

What’re your major/life plan?

Why?

How did you end up at Miami?

What're you doing in Armstrong?

Favorite hobby/movie/game/blood-type?

 

 

As it turned out, I didn’t make it very far into the questions.

 

He was from Cincinnati, and most people from his high school came to Miami. He was a first year, much to my surprise, and a business major. He had a girlfriend at OU, and for some horrible reason, liked the menu changes in the dining halls.

 

And I never had to rack my brain for a single question for him. We just kept talking, and talking. He never seemed at a loss for a topic, and I fell right into that pace, bouncing questions back at him. I forgot that I was supposed to be terrified. And ten minutes later, when he had to run to his next class, I knew I was definitely on to something.

 

For the first time in a long while, I began looking forward to lunch. The nerves began disappearing as I started to find more and more people willing to swap stories like I’d known them forever.

 

I talked to a Chinese international student in Americas at Maple Street, about two days after talking to Reid. Her name was Andrea. We started sharing stories about learning new languages and going to new places, something we had in common.

 

“In Madrid, me and my friends got lost outside of a Spanish KFC.”

 

“In Japan, the hotel owner drank the toilet water to prove how clean the hotel was.”

 

Both of us were practically howling with laughter, trying to stifle it with our hands so as not to bother the others. I don’t know if it worked very well.

 

“This is nice,” she said. Thursdays were her busiest days, she told me. She never had time to call up a friend to eat with her. “It gets lonely sometimes, so I eat fast and then head to my room.”

 

“I do that too,” I admit.

 

Why is it that so many people do?

 

I start wondering this more and more as I meet more people so different from me, and yet so similar. I meet a boy named Jason after getting blown into Pacific Rim by a snowstorm, and we find out our brothers are both choir teachers in Cincinnati. We both like videogames, though we both are definitely not programmers. I meet a sleepy kid in Western Dining Hall, Mike, who loves music, knows more about Garageband than I could ever dream. There was a girl getting ready for a Spanish test, Emily, who asks me why I’m doing this project, commending me for being so brave.

 

I don’t really feel brave about it, after the fourth try. It feels almost natural.

 

I sat with a boy named Tristan, and we bonded over our mutual disinterest in sports. We talked about our odd vocabularies, how I say ‘miffed’ and ‘woozy’ and he says ‘moist’ just to annoy his sister. 

 

On Green Beer day, I even sat with a woman, Hope, who worked with the disabled students on campus. She’d only been in Miami three weeks, and yet already we had a mutual friend.

 

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a social butterfly. Many of my lunches are spent in my room. I live for take-out and to-go menus, eating out of cardboard boxes in front of my latest project.

 

Part of it is necessity. I like eating and working. I like a certain amount of time to myself. Sometimes I’m so busy in my own world that my mom has to send me reminders to ‘go out and have fun.'

 

Another part of it is just nerves, trying to find someone willing to take the time to eat. Many lunches came and went my first year with me unable to rack up the courage to sit with people whose names I could place. Joining a sorority, where so many people already knew each other like sisters, was completely out of the question. It was hard when they were people whose opinions mattered so much to me.

 

It’s difficult for me to open up to people. It never occurred to me how willing to open up people were.

 

Why do people hate to sit with strangers?

 

As it turns out, Google doesn’t seem to know. Looking online, I can find dozens of ‘how-to’ guides on avoiding sitting with strangers on busses or theaters (2). But there’re never any ‘whys’, always ‘hows’. “Put your bag down,” they usually say. “Pretend to be asleep.” And it’s easy to understand why you would want to be wary on a bus, in a crowd where people are forced into proximity.

 

Google scholars yielded less results. The most relevant article was published in 1959. It was a study in a hospital dining hall that showed people sitting right next to each other interacting only 36% of the time, and that’s any interaction at all. It almost never turned into a full conversation (1). This was all that my research had to offer.

 

That’s not surprising. After all, there are plenty of times that I haven’t wanted to interact with a stranger. Much of the time I probably wouldn’t. I’m naturally introverted as it is. But humans as a species often put up so many barriers that we almost feel we can’t get to know strangers. No one is willing to even attempt it when they want to.

 

It’s not so bad, but it leads to plenty of lonely lunches.

 

I sat with a girl named Karly in Delish who’d almost gotten into a fight in Armstrong.

 

She started laughing as she said this, and I sat up in my chair. “I gotta hear this,” I said, laughing too.

 

“Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m telling this to a complete stranger,” she said suddenly, and I had to pause for a second. For a moment, I’d almost forgotten we were strangers. Talking to her had been like talking to a friend I hadn’t seen in forever. We’d been swapping stories about our days, talking about classes, about working, about how different school was from when our parents were kids. We didn’t feel like strangers.

 

How bizarre was it that we hadn’t even known each other’s names ten minutes before. How weird was it that I might never meet her again, and yet we shared such a wonderful moment together.

 

As I said before, I’m not a social person. I never dreamed of doing a project this terrifying before. But for a few times a week, I found people willing to take the time to talk in this huge and isolating world. That means something to me.

 

Resources

1. Sommer, Robert. "Studies In Personal Space." Sociometry 22.3 (1959): 247-60. JSTOR. Web. 08 Apr. 2015.

2. "Strangers on a Bus: Study Reveals Lengths Commuters Go to Avoid Each Other." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 Aug. 2012. Web. 08 Apr. 2015.