“What did you do before you had that little pink box,”? It was
a simple question posed by an elderly gentleman. He had just sat down next to
my chair in the hair salon. He was there for a haircut, I was sitting
‘impatiently’, waiting for the color to process and hide my gray for another
five or six weeks.
I shrugged my shoulders, smiled at him, and exited out of my
current candy crush saga. I swiveled my chair around and faced him. He was
nicely dressed, white haired and I could tell instantly that he was a ‘people
person’. Within a short few minutes of talking with him, I learned that he
resided in a little town south of the area I was from; he also had a
ten-year-old grandson that loved technology and grown kids that visited
“occasionally”. I could tell by the way he said the word, “occasionally”, that
it was not enough for his liking. We talked as the stylist clipped away at his
hair. By the end of the short conversation we discovered that we had two mutual
friends (in real life, not Facebook) and that his wife worked for another
acquaintance of mine. “Wow,” I said to him, “it really is a small world”.
“Yep,” he added. “But you wouldn’t have known that if you had held on to that
little pink box,” he laughed. His eyes were bright and friendly, but I knew he
was making his point.
After he left, I sat there for a minute observing. Almost
everyone else around me was engrossed in their own “little pink box”. I thought
about how many times I had sat in waiting rooms at doctor or dentist visits, or
stood in long lines at stores B.C.P (before cell phones). There was always
small talk with strangers that sometimes turned into a meaningful conversation.
I learned about the struggles and joys that unknown individuals were facing.
Over the years I have conversed with people I didn’t really know, about the
schools their kids attended, the illnesses their parents had endured, accidents
that had happened, vacation spots they liked, car troubles they were having,
diets that had failed, and of course weather, news and how things were
different when they were young. And maybe my life wasn’t majorly impacted by
these conversations, but my knowledge and awareness were definitely influenced.
I am certain that there are instances where we are ‘meant’
to encounter someone. I believe that God sends strangers into our paths at
times to encourage us, make us think, get our attention; or at times for us
to encourage them, make them think or get their attention. How many lonely or
hurting people have I sat next to at the doctor’s office that needed a brief
conversation to feel like life mattered, but I ignored them because I was
playing a game on my phone? How many people had news they would have like to have
shared or talked about, but I was too busy getting the latest news from
Facebook? How many places have I been present physically, but mentally absent
because I was trying to be present in a group text or Facebook message?
This nice, elderly gentleman that quite literally ‘forced’
me to put down my “little pink box” and have a conversation had me reflecting
and thinking about a lot of life situations. I know I am on my phone too much.
I know it has isolated me from strangers, and builds a wall of privacy that few
people attempt to climb and invade. I hope that during this New Year I will be
more aware of the people around me, especially the ones that want to interact
and strike up a conversation. I am going to try to be more approachable in
these situations. I believe the potential to learn something from the people we
briefly encounter exists. We just have to know when to put down our phones and
embrace that possibility; hopefully I can accomplish this more often than not
in the coming year.
