Stranger things have happened

A few nights ago at two in the morning, I walked into a Village Pantry a couple blocks from my apartment. I bought a package of something called “Munchies.” I was completely sober.

My craving was taken care of and I was pleased, but not after causing myself a great deal of mental and psychological strain trying to figure out what the cashier of the midnight shift was going to think of me and my purchase.

Alone at 2 a.m., buying a bag of snacks. Most likely high. I eventually took a look in the mirror and thought, “Girl, you’re 22. You are attractive enough to pull this off right now, but check yourself in 10 or 20 years.” I pinched my cheeks. “Lord help you then, because that midnight clerk will probably have some thoughts about the direction of your life, missus.”

Strangers, oddly, have a significant impact on what we think about and what we do. I know they keep me jogging far longer than I would if left to my own paltry devices. Wondering what a stranger will think if she sees me stopping before I have that gross line of sweat on my back is a much more powerful motivator than any desire of mine to pack it in and get a bag of “Munchies.”

Strangers influence where we look when riding on public transportation and what kind of music we listen to (and how loud) when riding in our cars. And let’s face it – we generally hope they think we’re cool. We want them to like us.

Whenever I am feeling bad about something I’ve done or said to a person in my life, I simply hold a door open for a stranger or swing by a blood drive and donate. It’s like doing some random good deed for a stranger tells the world you are a “good person” and cancels out whatever you did to your friend.

I remember crying once in high school during the day, not because I’d gotten into a fight with my mother that morning, but because afterward I’d tried to participate in the blood drive in order to cancel out the fight and they told me I didn’t have enough iron in my system. I was left with no way to cope with the morning’s events and labeled myself a “terrible person” for the duration of the day.

The ways strangers affect us are many. And while on one hand it is always good advice to “not worry about what other people think” and “march to the beat of your own drum” and other colorful euphemisms for being weird, the fact of the matter is that if you do something weird around a stranger, you are always and forever etched in their minds as the person who did that weird thing that one time.

Well, you’re at least etched there for five minutes until the stranger gets distracted thinking about what other strangers think of him or her.