I don’t know why, but Whole Foods is the place in town where I most consistently have strange encounters and conversations with complete strangers. Take today, for example. I was in there picking up a few miscellaneous things and some lunch. I was in the bread/baked good/cookie section, picking out a mooselick cookie (which is a vegan, super high fiber/whole grain/honey sweetened thing that is close enough to diet food for me) when I noticed a guy next to me talking to himself. “Huh, he doesn’t look crazy,” I thought to myself.
So I reached into the case with a piece of wax paper to select my cookie while the normal looking crazy guy kept talking to himself. I looked over at him again and he looked at me at the same time, one of those awkward moments where we realized we were both looking at each other. It passed and I started to walk away.
“Excuse me,” I heard behind me. Out of instinct, I stopped. “Excuse me,” this guy said again, and now that he was facing me directly, I could see that he had one of those cell phone earphones and microphones hanging out of his other ear. So he obviously hadn’t been talking to himself; he’d been on the phone. “Would you send out a letter and a resume for a job if you were unwilling or unable to go to a job interview?”
“Ah, no, no I wouldn’t.”
“Thank you,” cell phone guy said to me, and then he started back on with his crazy/cell phone conversation, “Do you see what I mean? I just asked the same thing….”