BS próza

Weird people

People's behavior in the U.S. shocks me.

I used to think that a lot of traveling makes a person more resistant to a cultural shock. A big misconception! After spending a few years in the U. S., behavior of quite a large number of Americans shocks me.

In my country, people behave more properly; acting according to the rules of generally accepted public behavior. They do not yell at each other, do not talk to strangers nor objects, do not urinate nor defecate on the street, and do not throw back the food back to you after they just asked for it. In my opinion, mutual agreement among people to follow these rules makes Slovak public safer and more comfortable place to live, where people do not have to be scared or stressed of too many unexpected.

Just last night at about 9pm, a doorbell interrupted me from talking to my friend. I had mixed feelings about it since nobody, except residents and postmen, had the key to our gated community. Anyway, I silently approached the front door and looked through the door lens to check who was the unexpected guest. Instead of seeing someone standing in front of the door, I noticed only a middle-aged man running away. "Weird", I told myself and waited by the door couple more minutes to see whether the person would come back, but nobody appeared. I was so scared that I decided not to take trash out later as usually. Instead, I started to rationalize about his intentions. I managed to calm myself down, telling myself that he might have just confused my door with somebody else's door. Unfortunately, half an hour later, I heard knocking on my door. This time wet from sweat and with heart in my pants, I decided not to move and sent my friend to check. "Nobody again", I heard her whispering. I was very concerned about the situation and together with my friend decided to wait by the door, hoping to see the stranger. Nothing happened a few minutes later nor for the rest of the night. I could not get a good sleep that night, trying to put this event together with similar one that happened to me at the same place one year ago.
Before I encountered a woman in downtown San Francisco who was talking to a pigeon. Other people were rushing and passing her by, as it was a common thing to talk to a bird. For me it was quite an unusual picture. I wondered why a pigeon, which had lost a job of a main delivery courier in developed countries, grabbed her full attention. From a distance of a few feet, I witnessed woman's monologue. "Hi birdie! How is it going? You are so cute. Look at those feathers! Are you hungry? Those people do not want to give you anything to eat? I am starving, too. I haven't had my dinner yet. Are you cold? Do you have a warm place to hide in? Oh, a poor thing!" she said, then looked at her watch and walked away, waving good-bye to the pigeon. After she left, I was still standing there and watching the pigeon, hoping to find its unique features so I could understand her behavior. I did not find any feature different from other pigeons. Then I thought, that was a weird "conversation"; talking to a common pigeon that did not even delivers the mail anymore.

Besides seeing people who talked to objects or who urinated at the BART escalator, I came across people who started to talk to me about their personal life in the drugstore. For example, an old lady complained to me recently about how her son babysat her by doing her shopping or taking her to hospital. She felt so upset about him, taking care of her when she claimed to be able to manage herself well, that she insisted on me to listen to her story about the suitcase her son bought for her. "I do not know what he thinks, I am going to do with a such a big suitcase! I am too short to be able to carry it on the BART. I told him so many times to let me shop by myself, but he never listens to me. He just wastes his time on me instead of earning money to pay his bills! That's a great logic!" she went on and on complaining about the scooter that he bought because she had a bicycle. Then she continued to complain about how she couldn't find some medicine in the drugstore. I tried to calm her down so I could continue my shopping but she would not let me, following me on her high-tech scooter all around the store until I went to register to pay.

There were more cases of weird people out in the streets! Quite often times I got disturbed by a noisy shouting, "Hey, hello!" or "How are you?" from somebody I had never met before. When I did not reply, a person would continue to repeat the greeting several times. When I had not replied again, he became angry, sometimes following me with, "What's the matter? Hello?" Then I tried to search for a coffee shop or a grocery shop to hide but the person would follow me there. I did not understand why he had continued to annoy and scare me when I had ignored him at the beginning. Then he let it go, but still circling around the store for a while. I felt confused and did not know what this person was intending to do. I tried to understand why had followed me but had not come to the store to search for me. I could not understand it. From principle, I would not talk to strangers on the street since we met first and probably last time.

I find it very difficult to understand behavior of some people in this country. Sometimes, their behavior annoys me, then, it fascinates me, scares me, disgusts me or just confuses me. In my country, at least I know that people would not make you wonder about yourself.