Member-only story
You Can Find Common Ground With Anyone
Put your phone down and talk to a stranger
I’m on disability, and my wife isn’t working. We don’t have a car, so we’re around each other every waking moment, and it gets to be too much. My wife hoards spare change. Yesterday, she had had enough, so she gave me some money and told me to walk to the nearest fast-food place.
I love my wife, but there are things we can’t talk about together. We’re from different worlds. That’s awesome when we can expand our horizons and come together with empathy and understanding, but we’re human, and there are times we need to be away from each other.
I walk into the place, salivating over the aroma of sizzling burgers. I ordered a double cheeseburger with large fries and a large Dr. Pepper. I sit down to dig in. There was an old man with a straggly grey beard sitting at the next table.
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He took a break from pounding the keys of his laptop and asked how I was doing. I answered, and the conversation began. He asked questions, and I elaborated or didn’t. It was obvious he wasn’t an educated man, he also mentioned that he had never been out of Fairfield County.
I have some college, and I have lived all over the States, and I went to High School on a base in Japan. We had nothing in…
