I had something similar happen to me the other day. I was sitting indian-style behind my cart tagging books with a pricing gun, and a girl of about 4 with a pink cast on her arm looked at me for about 5 minutes as if I were something strange and wonderful.

Awww.

And you were in control of the books! You were indeed something strange and wonderful!

That's so cool, both of you.

jonmc, I have always known you to be strange and wonderful.

(You are telling me pricing guns still exist? I thought they'd gone the way of the dodo bird.)

Nice! The bank lady was cheerier when I left than when I arrived. I smiled even though she was crabby initially. If you can make it to lunch on monday you're good to go.

Usually that happens for me with little kids. Two or three times in my life I've standing somewhere minding my own business when suddenly some uber cute little kid I've never seen before sees me and maniacally runs like ten feet directly towards me (often with adults freaking out trying to stop them) in order to full-body-slam against my legs and hug me with all of their might. Often giggling is involved.

No clue why. It never sucks, though.

Similar to jonmc and miss lynnster: I also seem to attract kids and animals. I figure as long as they still like me, I'm doing okay.

Yesterday I was picking some stuff at a farm with people from my Slow Food group. Two of them had brought their two-year-old, adopted about a year ago from Guatemala. She is a quiet curious girl who watches everything. I had only met her a couple of times and didn't really know her or her parents well.

She came up to me and said "woof woof." From this, I gathered that she wanted to see the hunting dogs in a pen around the corner. I held out my hand and said "You want to see the doggies?"; she took it, and we walked to see the doggies. Then we went to see a nearby horse. When the horse nuzzled me, I laughed, and I think she wanted in on the fun, so she extended her arms up to me to be picked up.

God, did I melt. I picked her up on my hip and we gave the horse a leek. Biological clock spinning madly out of control. There's no feeling like being specially selected out by a little, little child.

I think when it comes to little kids, they just seem to sense that I like them and that I'm usually up for a little face-making from across the subway car, restaurant, whatever.

Most of my friends are your typical cynical urban dwellers who pretend to loathe kids and deny that they'll ever have any, so they always seem horrified when I'm chatting with some babbling toddler who's wandered up to our table. I don't understand the law that city kids in their mid-late twenties must avoid kids like the plague. They make me so happy!

Most of my friends are your typical cynical urban dwellers who pretend to loathe kids and deny that they'll ever have any, so they always seem horrified when I'm chatting with some babbling toddler who's wandered up to our table... I don't understand the law that city kids in their mid-late twenties must avoid kids like the plague.

That 'law' is mostly bullshit made up by kids who come to the city to establish little 'youth reservations,' who seem to be unaware that *gasp* city people have kids too.

and ye, bunnyfire, pricing guns still exist, nd they are thje bane of my existence because they are still a bear to reload.

I made a connection down around Chambers St. the other day with a well dressed (If you don't count stains on the ascot, holes in the elbows, tatters in the cuffs, and a crooked bowtie) madman with a good 14" of afro and a big Eddie Murray moustachio. He asked me for a cigarette, and I gave him the one I'd just rolled.

"You roll 'em with a filter?"

Yes, I do. He was concerned that I'd have enough for myself, and I reassured him that they were easy to roll and cost half as much as the usual kind. Just before he started across the red light, oblivious to the honking cabs, he told me, "The white woman teaches the black man how to be civilized. And I can use that," he shouted, now on the opposite corner, "because I'm a faggot!"

Crazy town.

How nice, occhiblu.

I find myself saying hello to strangers. Strangers say hello to me. It definitely has something to do with a shared smile. Oddly enough, this happens a lot in bookstores. :)

I picked her up on my hip, and we gave the horse a leek.

TMI, Miko!

I try giving a perfect stranger a big smile for no good reason sometimes, but more often then no, it creeps them out....

I find myself saying hello to strangers only to have them look at me askance and sidle farther away. Oh well.

Strangers react to me in three ways:

"Oh, you're American? Where are you from (even though I don't know *anything* about American geography)? What are you doing here?"

"Good set; have you been playing long? Do you know any of ____'s (insert artist) songs?"

"Oh, you're in IT! My computer is doing this: _________..."

Babies and little kids get fixated on me here - I think it's because I have pale coloured eyes. I've even noticed myself being drawn to look at pale eyes lately. Dark brown eyes are much stronger punctuation in the face, pale colours are more mysterious and harder to pin down.

Strangers tell me their complete life stories in the matter of minutes. Case in point: I went for a walk at a park. A young woman was walking ahead of me with her Australian shepard. The dog kept looking back at me, so she waited for me to catch up - he would not walk otherwise. We ended up together, because her dog "Leroy" took a liking to me. In the course of our walk I discovered: her name is Christine; she's 30 years old; Greek; her parents own a restaurant; her sister just had a baby girl; she and her husband had been trying to conceive; and next month they were going to start fertility treatments. I came home and told my husband all this, and he just looks at me, because it happens all the time.

I've been on a fishing boat full of strangers, and the only kid on the boat somehow finds me and we hang out. I like other people's kids (mine can get on my nerves after a while ;^) )

And I also must have a "retail face". I do work in a supermarket, but I can be shopping in any retail establishment, and someone will always mistake me for an employee. Always.

Oh, and PS> I still run into Christine and Leroy at the park. She's 5 months pregnant!!

Yay, Christine! :-)

And I also must have a "retail face". I do work in a supermarket, but I can be shopping in any retail establishment, and someone will always mistake me for an employee.

Same here. When I lived in Miami one of the first Spanish phrases I mastered was "no trabajo aqui."

Oh, and PS> I still run into Christine and Leroy at the park. She's 5 months pregnant!!

Wasn't me.

I say hi to strangers all the time. It's middle-America thing, we all do it out here.

Yeah, I try to smile at strangers when I can (that is, when they make eye contact with me). But this woman this morning just went with a full-out, full-body grin that was totally inspiring. It was like finding a hundred dollar bill on the street.

It was like finding a hundred dollar bill on the street.

Now that was mine.

I have a tendency to attract people who need directions. No matter what city I'm in, people will walk or roll up and say "Pardon me? Could you help me get to . . .?" And if I happen to be visiting a city and say that I'm not a local, I often get surprised faces. The coolest direction question I got was from Nina Simone's personal assistant. She stopped me on Michigan to ask me where the NikeTown store was. I asked where she was from because her accent was intriguing. She said she was from Paris and was here with her boss. "Really? Who?" "Nina Simone." I turned into a fan girl for a minute and she laughed and then asked me for food recommendations. I gave her a few and I wish I knew where she ate that night. She really wanted soul food. But since she was just visiting Chicago, New York, and LA she didn't expect to get any real soul food. Anyway.

And me3dia probably thinks I make stuff up, but I'm often coming home with a "You'll never believe what I saw today" or "Guess what conversation I had?" Like the time I saw a hobbled woman easily in her 80s sit down next to a punk-kid on the train. She craned her neck to stare at a tattoo on his forearm and then said something in Yiddish and started to cry. He replied that he didn't speak Yiddish and told her about how it was the number assigned to his grandfather who was killed by the Nazis and since it was the only thing he had of his, he wanted to keep it with him always to remind him of how good he had life and how much worse things could be. No less than half a dozen people started crying on the train.

Wow, Cinnamon. That's quite a story.

My wife greets strangers in the street. I look on bemusedly.
When we lived in Berkeley, she had 4 different people come up out of the blue to complement her on one particular green leather jacket.
Kids stare at me, though not as much as when I had mid-back length hair, beard and mustache.