Perfect Strangers

I was at the bank and feeling quite jovial on Saturday, so I cordially began a conversation about the length of the bank line with the woman behind me. Usually I feel zero need to proactively engage with strangers, yet possibly because of the 50 degree temperatures, I was a bit less hibernational (NOT a word) in nature. Apparently however, I opened a conversation can of worms and the universe decided that I wanted to talk to everyone... Which I’d now like to take the opportunity to urgently set straight. Dear universe, please stop telling strangers it’s okay to talk to me. I’d appreciate if you could take care of this ASAP. Love, Jessica.

Since my fateful exchange with the lady in the bank on Saturday, 3 complete strangers have decided I look like someone to randomly talk to. Seriously, this has never happened to me before. People do not talk to me... Well unless it’s to creepily tell me to “smile.” I first noticed this strange phenomenon after my bank conversation, when I arrived at 81st and Central Park West in an attempt to take the downtown subway to Port Authority... Which I soon discovered wasn’t running. I, obviously unhappy to find myself in this situation seeing as I would now miss my bus to NJ, scrambled to find another way downtown and was confronted with Fran.

We’ll call her Fran. Sadly we did not exchange names. Fran, who also happened to be on the phone while talking to me, began asking how long I’d been waiting for the downtown bus, do I see one?, is one coming? Lady, what the hell is wrong with your eyes? You are standing right next to me. Can you not look for the bus for yourself? Do I have bionic bus locating vision? She begins to tell me her sad story of woe, how much she hates the MTA, how long it took her to get across town, while I figure if I have to listen to this crap, I might as well share my unfortunate story as well. But she doesn’t care, she talks over me and keeps blabbing about herself until the bus finally arrives. You suck Fran, don’t ever talk to me again.

At Port Authority, I meet Nadia, who approaches me because she has no idea where she’s going and I have no idea what she’s saying in her heavy accent. Why do I look like I have all of the answers? Do I suddenly appear to be some kind of approachable person? How do I make this stop!!??

And lastly this morning on the bus (wow, noticing a pattern here... Never getting on a bus again) some lady that I don’t even have the energy nor interest to assign a fake name, started talking to me while I sat there fully wearing my headphones and not listening to her. I honestly could not hear a word she was saying to me, because I was clearly listening to music, so I simply kept nodding my head and smiling at her until she either realized I wasn’t interested or stopped talking.

Really people. I think we might be taking this Jessica is a nice person in 2009 thing a bit too far. It’s only February, at least let me ease into it. Can we quell the random stranger verbal attacks until at least May?