The latest challenge posted on Rob Walker's The Art of Noticing is to have conversations with complete strangers, just to see where they go and how it feels.
I love this idea, though I'm an introvert. I posted a story about an encounter I had recently in a laundromat in Southeastern Utah.
I’m an introvert by nature, but I also like a good story, which sometimes draws me out of my normal reticence. A week or so ago I found myself in a laundromat in a tiny town in Southeastern Utah.
On one side of the laundry was a large pile of used clothes and books. A man (who I later found out was a member of the Navajo Nation) was looking through the clothes. We acknowledged each other and I got my laundry going. We were both waiting, him for a ride from his friend “in the brown pickup, if you see it let me know” and me for my laundry; we shared a waiting-space together. I asked him about the story behind the laundry pile. He said people brought old clothes for others to use. Same with the books. The laundry was a community place, he said. I told him its pretty cool the way people take care of each other in such a simple way. I told him I lived in a rural area in the Midwest and that’s the kind of thing people in my area did for each other, too. I told him some of my most comfortable clothes had been worn by others first. He agreed and told me about his favorite shirt: really soft because someone broke it in for him. I said I was passing through town and that I lived in the Midwest. He replied that he was from the Navajo Nation, which was just over the state line, “the largest Nation in the US.” I told him I was a teacher once and, for a while, worked with Anishinabe tribes in the Midwest trying to keep kids in school. I said I noticed there were so many more native speakers in the West. He said, without your language you don’t have your culture. I told him that tribal members in the Midwest are trying to help their children learn their language, but it’s difficult. I asked him about boarding schools because kids were punished for using their language in those in the Midwest. Was it the same or different here? He said he was too young to have gone to one, but that his grandfather had terrible stories about the boarding school. He asked if I knew of “government handles?” I said no. He said his grandfather told him they’d shave the hair off the kids, except for a part of the front so they could grab ahold of the kid and lead him around. Oh my god. Such cruelty, I said. A person doesn’t forget that kind of cruelty. Silence. He said, that’s right; his grandfather never forgot it. Some more silence and talk. The brown truck arrived. The washing machine stopped spinning. We thanked each other for the conversation and left the laundry.