Talking

I can't help it.

It is in my genes.

I talk to strangers.

As a child when I was with either parent, they would engage in long conversations. I would wonder should I know them or not. More often than not...NOT. My parents didn't know them either.

Thus I find on trains, planes, buses, restaurants and/or lines, I am as apt to start a conversation with a stranger (I won't use the term perfect stranger, because no one is perfect) that seems open to it. I have run into economists, a woman manufacturer of jelly, a former Barnum and Bailey acrobat, a nun in disguise as a civilian, any number of different nationalities, refugees, students . . . and discovered bits and pieces of the world I would have missed otherwise. Now I can do it in French as well as English.

I will often tell Rick about how this or that person I just met climbed a mountain, had just been divorced, wants to go to Hanoi or or or or . . .

Today we were chatting with Norbert, whom I just met. He wasn't a total stranger because we were introduced. The conversation was in French. Rick joined in. Normally, he is not a stranger chatterer, but it does show that his French confidence has progressed.