This weekend I went to Las Vegas. I tagged along for a friend of a friend’s birthday because I could and, let me tell you, so many of my favorite parts of that weekend are the times I made an effort to talk to strangers.
On our way there, about 20 minutes outside of the city, our car broke down. The four of us roasted in 109 degree heat while we waited for a string of misinformed tow trucks to pull us a few more miles so we could start our weekend. About an hour in one of our group members called a state trooper to come sit with us while we waited, citing a horror movie she’d seen when a bad guy stopped to help some girls on the side of the road and things didn’t end well.
It felt a little paranoid to me, but it turned out to be awesome when he arrived and proceeded to tell us amazing officer stories for the next three hours.
As the temperature melted down to 100 and our tow trucks got even more lost, our trooper kept us distracted and entertained, wowing us with arrests he’d made and medals he’d won. He even told us what he looks for when pulling over speeders (rental cars) and how not to act when attempting to get out of a ticket (anger is not the best response). It was interesting and amusing to be that casual with an officer, completely worth feeling a little pathetic for calling in the first place. I wholeheartedly recommend it the next time your stopped on the road, unless you’re a terrible liar because he will probably ask you if you have anything illegal with you in the car (even as a joke you’ll still panic).
Once we finally arrived we showered off the sweat and drama and headed out to wander the strip, stopping often to take pictures for people and compliment their outfits. Vegas is built for interaction, stopping to talk and connect with strangers is the only way to really live it.
A few hours later, let’s call it 1 a.m, I saw two boys I recognized from earlier in the night. I remembered them because all I’d heard as they walked past us was, “there are no good bands in Boston,” and when I noted their fedoras and too tight vests I giggled to myself that they were typical hipsters. After that I mostly forgot about them, until I saw them again on the other side of town a few hours later. I had to say something, so I sped up and touched one of them on the shoulder saying, “So I hear there aren’t any good bands in Boston?”
At first they didn’t know what to do, still walking as they looked me up and down trying to figure out how the hell I had read their minds. Laughing, I explained that I’d overheard them earlier and that I’d taken note of who they were because the line was so absurd. After that conversation was easy, happily commenting on how magical Vegas can be, reuniting strangers miles from where they’d passed before. Mumford and Sons started the current music scene they told me (I felt pretty cool because I actually knew that), but with acts like The Lumineers and Of Monsters and Men gaining so much popularity, it is only a matter of time before some entirely new sound comes along to revolutionize what we listen to.
I tried to push them for details, what explicitly they thought the new sound could be, but they avoided any real answers, saying only that they knew it was coming – though appropriately making sure I knew they didn’t have much hope for the mainstream music scene to catch on for years after that. I teased them for putting down their own Boston-based bands and they even gave me the names of some musicians (including their own, now lost somewhere in my memory) to look up if I wanted to. I could have stayed and challenged them for hours; I think it does hipsters good to talk to people who don’t know what is cool before it is cool. But my friends were waiting so I turned down their offer of $1 Michelobes and returned to the crowd, wasting no time to scope out my next interactions.
An hour or so of random wanderings (and bidding adieu to the tired half of our group) later, one particular young couple was so perfectly positioned for a photo I had to stop and offer. At first they declined, apparently not drunk enough to trust a stranger with their camera. But we kept the conversation going and a half hour later we were exchanging emails and promising to look each other up if we were in the area. She told me a few places I had to see while I was in London (apparently Shoreditch in East London is an interesting district?) and he said that he used to visit the Scottish Isles on vacations with his family. He even told me about Nate Silver (a writer, mathematician, political guru and baseball junkie who we should have already heard of). It was a beautiful conversation, one where I learned so much about what I want and how life can be. It’s already been a few days and I still can’t imagine my life without that interaction. I was so much less before it and I now know so much more about the person I want to become.
The best things in life come from getting outside and talking to someone new. It is easy to do in Vegas, but it even more important to do everywhere else. People want to share their stories, why don’t we try harder to facilitate them?
The next day I had a million more conversations with a million more beautiful people, including Gavin the very attractive art curator who offered to give me tips if I ever want to travel to South East Asia (apparently it’s the ONLY place to go) and Charles the swoon worthy street guitarist who shook my hand and melted my heart. I know I won’t keep this level of interaction in my everyday life, but I do know that I’m going to make more of an effort to. People are mostly good, especially when we give them a chance to show it.