My husband and I seem to be blessed with faces that encourage strangers to talk to us.  And when I say strangers, I mean STRANGERS!  People we don’t know from Adam will talk to us with great confidence about things we wouldn’t talk to dear friends about.  It is a very strange phenomenon.  Sometimes it makes for a very uncomfortable conversation as well.  I remember once, being on the phone with my hubby and he had a fellow approach him (he was at a phone booth…remember those?) and ask if he knew where he could score some cocaine.  My husband told him to hang on. “I’m talking to my dealer now.” he said.  I didn’t think that was funny, but my hubby got a kick out of it.  You wouldn’t believe the conversations I’ve been involved in.  I have discussed politics, body parts, children, grandchildren, hygiene, local government, illegal aliens, religion, and just recently my daughter’s sexuality, with strangers.  My life is not dull.  I’ll get to that last bit if you’ll just bear with me.

Have you ever had the chance to truly discuss reincarnation with anyone?  It seems a general belief that there is a kind of well of souls, and that your soul dwells in it until you are reassigned.  Then when time and space is right for you again you re-emerge as someone new.  Okay, I guess.  I know a lot of people believe in reincarnation and far be it from me to tell them they are wrong, but here’s the one flaw I find when I talk to people…especially people who have had a reading that tells them about their past lives…they were all someone famous.  No one was ever Joe Blow from down the street.  I’ve met half a dozen Cleopatras, and a John the Baptist or two, the other day (well actually more like 2 months ago) I met Mary Magdalene but no one who just traveled through life doing nothing, plodding along making a living…singing their song…being a logger.  Where are those folks?  I went to a chiropractor once.  The first trip was fine.  He did the crap that all chiropractor’s do.  The second time he wanted to talk to my feet.  Apparently I have real chatty feet, they told him that the reason my back hurt was because I was stoned to death in a former life.  Wow!  And I paid for that!  Psychopractor, as he was henceforth known, never saw me again, but at least I wasn’t someone famous.  Just my damn luck.  I find out I was reincarnated and I’m the one person in the whole effing world who wasn’t famous! 

So anyway, the other day I was in the midst of a full blown asthma attack and I had a crack in my nebulizer (sounds dirty doesn’t it) so I had to go the medical supply store to get the part for it.  I am waiting on the lady to return to the store to get my thingy and from out of no where this chick swoops in on me.  She looks like her hair hasn’t been washed in a couple of days and her clothes don’t exactly match but they look clean.  Her style…I’m being gracious here…is eclectic, and I’m pretty sure she made her purse herself.  “Who are you waiting for?” she asked.  “I don’t know the lady’s name, but she is meeting me here.”  “That’s my mom.”  I was amazed that she figured that out from me just saying lady and meeting here, but okay.  I really didn’t have the air to talk.  “What’s your name?”  I told her.  “When someone asks your name you are supposed to ask their name back.”  So I did.  She told me her name, she told me her age, she told me she still lived at home, and she didn’t want babies.  I told her that was fine.  She asked if I had a daughter and when I said yes she had to know her age, and was she married, and did she have babies, and why not, and was she married, and where did she live, and on and on and on.  I finally answered yes and no enough to make her understand that my single daughter was the same age she was, had no children, lived in Lakeport California with her boyfriend and was okay with all of the above.  I hoped we were done.  Then she opened up on me about how living with men you weren’t married to was a sin, and did I know my daughter was going to hell?  Now, I’m pretty sure the poor thing was a few bricks shy of a load and that’s why I let her live.  After all no one get to send my children to eternal damnation but me, at least in general, so I just looked at the poor little thing who probably would never have the chance to live in sin with man and answered her accusations as sweetly as I could.  “Yes, sweetie.  I know.  But we’re all going on the family plan.”  It was about then that her mother pulled up.

 Yup, I don’t know why we get to carry on the conversations with the people we do.  There’s just something about us that screams “Go ahead, we’ll listen.”  Strangely enough, we do.  It gives us something to talk about with each other.