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Monday, November 25, 2013

On Meeting New People At The Laundromat

Once a week, I load up our clothes and head to the laundromat. For about an hour, I watch the machines spin around and play on my phone. And usually, there is at least one other person watching the same spinning.  Sometimes, we talk.

Talking to strangers doesn't come easy for me. I'm an introvert, and by nature I would rather just sit on my phone. It's also one of my only breaks during the week, so I want to do what I want. But. I've met some interesting people.

There was the grumpy old couple with the broken machine at home, who fit all the stereotypes of crochety old woman and her husband who just follows along.  There was the man whose beer can fell out of his pocket as he collected his clean clothes from the dryer.

And today, there was a woman who started off talking about the weather, and ended up talking about baby spacing and infertility. We only scratched the surface of her story in the twenty minutes or so we shared, but it was a real human connection.

I don't know why we had this conversation. Maybe she needed to talk, even after all these years. Maybe I needed to hear it to realize how blessed I have been to have my babies spaced so evenly pretty much when I wanted them to be.

I want to have more conversations like this. I psych myself up thinking it's so hard, but really? It just starts with the weather, with saying hello.  Maybe next week...

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