The Talking To Strangers Series

Although I could be considered almost an introvert when depressed, I will avoid leaving the house at all costs, avoid phone calls or generally talking to anyone I actually know in real life, I can still happily blather on for an hour to a total stranger as long as they start it. If I am hypomanic I will probably be the one to start it. Maybe the urge to chit chat has come from nearly two decades working in retail where a basic art of sales teaches us that the more we encouraged a customer to talk about themselves the more they would tend to like us and therefor buy stuff from us and come back again.

Or perhaps it is just my personality, if you have been reading my blog for a while then you would already know that I tend to write excessively, and I just like I tend to write a lot, I also like to talk a lot, some would say I talk too much, way too much. There were many references to my fondness for a chat made in my school reports as a child, some teachers framed it positively “Kate certainly has the gift of the gab” some less so, “Kate is constantly distracting the rest of the class with her incessant chatter” Sorry Miss A!

This not-being-able-to-shut-up issue becomes amplified when I am hypomanic and coupled with my Irish catholic style guilt and poor monetary decision making skills, makes me easy prey for those *charity mobs who circle like sharks at shopping centres trying to guilt me into another $20 a month I simply don’t have.

Anyway, where was I?

So, I frequently talk to strangers and for some reason they feel comfortable talking to me, I don’t mean just ‘it’s bloody cold outside’ small talk, I mean deep and meaningful over-sharing conversations where I have learned the deepest and darkest fears and secrets of people I will never see again while catching Ferry’s, in line at the grocery store or sitting in doctors waiting rooms. I started documenting a few of these encounters recently and I figured I would add more over time and link the posts here below for you to view at your leisure.

• Richard – The God Faring Manic and Author
• Connie – The Old Lady With Dementia
• Supermarket Lady with anorexia
• The Lady on the Ferry – for the grief of a brother
• When Old Men Cry

*pro tip: I have finally learned that if I tell the charity hustlers politely that I don’t have a job at the moment they are legally not allowed to ask me for money so they stop pestering me! Wish I’d learned that $60-I-don’t-have-a-month-ago, you have to write a physical letter in order to back out of the payment plan which is surprisingly hard to find the motivation to do when you crash down from the mania that got you into this mess, so unless you really can afford it an it’s a charity you truly believe in, just say NO!