People like to talk to me. I don’t know what it is. I don’t think I look particularly friendly, but I must. I usually encounter at least one person who leaves a lasting impression on me when I travel.

One of my more memorable ones happened at the Philly airport during my layover. I was sitting at the gate, next to a young woman with some sort of mental disability. She was with her family. So I’m sitting there, reading when she pulls out her passport, clasping it in both hands, and turns to me “Ohhhh, I’ve got something to show you!”

I ask her what.

She goes on to say that she wants to show me her passport photo, but before she does she explains that she used to have really long hair. Then one day “the good lord” told her she was going to lose all her hair. Thinking it was going to be cancer, she decided to shave her hair off. Turns out right afterward she got really bad lice and was happy she didn’t have as much hair at the time. The passport photo was taken right after she shaved her head. I assured her the photo was cute and then got up to sit somewhere else. I guess it was nice that I listened to her. She said “God bless you my love, god bless you.”

A more pleasant encounter was the old man, like grandpa age, who got up from his seat to ask if I wanted to sit on our shuttle from the plane to terminal.

And then there is the cop this weekend who pulled us over for making an illegal right turn on red. He was in front of us. We got pulled over by a cop in front of us. He just warned us how easy it is to lose attention while “in a heated conversation.” I must have been laughing too hard in the car when he spotted us.