Talking to strangers

          This morning I had an interesting experience. I was returning some merchandise to the Costco store on Michigan Avenue. As I was walking through the parking lot towards the store with my cart and merchandise, a young woman passed me leaving the store pushing a cart piled with stuff. As she passed by, she looked at me, smiled, and said, "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" It surprised me a little, because I didn't recognize her. After a pause, I replied, "Yes, it is a beautiful spring day!"  Then I looked at her again, and asked, "I'm sorry, Do I know you?" because she acted like she knew me and she didn't look familiar to me. She said, "No" laughed, smiled and went on her way to her car. This made me start wondering why we don't say "hello" or just make a simple greeting to people we don't know. So I decided to do a quick experiment. After I returned the merchandise and got to Ivy Tech, I decided to say hello to 10 random students while I walked to my first class. These are the results of my experiment; five of them said "hello" back to me and a couple of them smiled and said, "How are you?" Three of them looked at me and didn't say anything. Two said "hello" but didn't look at me. They looked down at the floor. So I started thinking about the years that I lived in Mexico, and that it was common to greet strangers you passed by on the street with some pleasantry or comment about the weather. When I got to class, I told my students, who are from many countries around the world, about my experience and asked them what they thought. They said that in general, most Americans are friendlier to strangers than people are in their countries. One student from an African country insisted that in his country you would never greet a person you didn't know or had not been introduced to. It would be considered bad manners. A student from another African country said that in his country it was common to say "hello" to anyone you passed in the street, whether you knew them or not.  Obviously, this is a lot more complicated than I had originally thought. You can't just say that Americans are this way and everyone else is a different way.  Many times our international students complain that they don't have American friends, even if they have lived in the U.S. for several years. So I challenged them to just say "hello" to 10 American students, as I had,  as they walk around campus, and see what happens. I told them that, who knows, they might start up a conversation with one of these "strangers" and make a friend. Just as it was for me, it might be uncomfortable for them to say "hello" to someone they don't know, but it might be a risk worth taking. What do you think?