Waving to strangers

The thing I like the most about this country is the extraordinary friendliness of its natives. Virtual strangers will hi and hello you at every opportunity they get. Sometimes it can be a problem for social outcastes like me who are not used to this level of camaraderie from their fellow inmates. It is therefore second nature for me in such cases to react with a precise amount of witlessness that is calculated to curdle the milk of this human kindness and turn it into the yogurt of hostility.

I was sitting in my car at the train station waiting for the Amtrak to roll in. I saw a woman running along in order to cross the tracks and reach the train on the other side. As I stared in her direction trying to gauge whether she would make the trip in time, she smiled and waved in my direction.

Perplexed, I pointed to my own face inquiringly because my intense inferiority complex disallows me from assuming that when anyone is waving in my direction, they are, in fact, waving at me. The woman pointed back, yes you.

It was then that I turned my neck in order to enact that well documented move where you look behind to check the presence of someone behind you who could be the target of somebody's attention and not you. This appeared to be the final straw. The woman slapped away an annoyed never mind and continued to race to her train. That will probably be the last time she is friendly to a stranger. Too much red tape involved.

And needless to say, this will continue to happen to me time and time again as single-handedly I continue to make Americans more xenophobic.