Conversations with Strangers

I was on the packed bus from school today when a kindly gentleman asked me a question about a button I pineed onto my schoolbag. (The question, I couldn’t answer; one of my friends gave me that pin for my 18th birthday and I display it as a reminder of her.)

Anyway, he struck up a conversation with me after that and I found out that he’s a professor at the School of Music, so all you music students out there have at least one very nice man as a teacher! And so we talked a little bit about music and I was very delighted to find someone who knows the UK Associated Board system as well as Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music, and I told him that I’m in English lit, and yes I’d like to do a Master’s, and I’m in the Co-op program to help me think about what I’ll do after that. All in all, it was a very nice conversation and I give him full credit for beginning it; I’ve decided that all my first-year friendliness was a face I put on or a phase I went through and that actually I’m as shy of strangers as I was when I was three. (I have a clear memory of hiding behind my mother’s legs when one of my soon-to-be kindergarten teachers bent down to greet me.)

That said, I found myself grinning at another lady who smiled straight back at me after we managed to run and catch another bus; I guess running for a bus and making it creates a common bond of sorts.

Now that finals and papers are upon us all, I am on the ready to attack! Except, of course, for this raging migraine I’ve had all day which has been sending mayday calls for bed, and the fact that I seem to be coming down with something. Dreadful timing to get sick; I mean, what is my body thinking?!