HELLO, STRANGER

four writers tell a memorable tale of an interaction with an unknown passerby.

By Deirdre Fidge -

Being invisible is a really scary feeling. For a couple of years, I was. (Not literally invisible, although that would have been pretty cool – I probably would have gotten to sneak into a lot of rad gigs, and floated over the top of the crowd because in this fantasy, I can also fly.) My health issues had gotten to the point where I was unable to work, or socialise, and I had to move back home. As a result, weeks would go by where the only people I’d speak to would be my (wonderful, supportive) mum and my therapist. Technically, I would occasionally speak to Mum’s dog Jimmy, but it was a rather one-sided conversation, and to be honest, his hearing wasn’t great. I tried to keep busy during the days without overwhelming myself, attempting to schedule some normality and routine into my life. But usually, I just stayed home alone. It was almost too alluring to become a recluse, so I eventually forced myself to get outside every day. Long walks became a regular activity for me – especially because this was around the time Pokémon Go was released. I’d walk along the beach, I’d walk between trees, I’d walk around the suburbs, catching various Jigglypuffs and Eevies as I went. It wasn’t a busy area, especially on weekdays while I was roaming – usually, I was a lone Pokémon hunter. I rarely walked past other people, and due to my anxiety, avoided peak hours like school drop-off and pick-up times. But because of this, I started to feel invisible. Was I a ghost? When was the last time I’d had a conversation? When was the last time I’d smiled? It was an eerie feeling, and I felt myself growing anxious at the dissonance between desperately wanting to be seen, and desperately not wanting to talk to anyone. On one of those days, I walked past an older man who was waiting for his two dogs. If you converted the dog years into human years, they were probably all around the same age: moving slowly, greying hair, and all three seemingly smiling. “Hello!” the man said. Now, I’m not the friendliest of people, and can be incredibly anxious and awkward around strangers – I’m never the first to say hello on these occasions. But I managed to squeak back, “Hi!” He pointed at the phone resting in my sweaty hand. “Ooh!” A note of recognition. “Are you playing Pandango?” Given he could see my screen, I was 80 per cent sure he meant Pokémon, but my natural instinct was to say no and run away. For some reason, I said, “Yes! Have you played it? There’s a Pokémon right there.” I moved closer, showing him the Magikarp that allegedly existed right in front of us. “Yes, I’ve seen this, how do you get it?” I flicked my finger across the screen and – thankfully, for my dignity’s sake – caught the wee fish. “AH!” He was delighted. The smaller of his dogs looked up at me for a pat, and I bent down to give him a stroke near a large bulbous growth above his doggy brow. I felt an odd connection to this man and his dogs, and we all just stood there for a moment under the crisp winter sun. It didn’t feel like an awkward silence – I was real. I was a person. Since that time, I’m more aware of smiling at people I walk by, and being extra-friendly to customer service staff. You truly never know what’s going on in the lives of others, and even the smallest of kind gestures can be enormous for another person. You might just help someone feel seen.

By Daniel Moore -

When I was 19, I broke my leg. Like, really broke it. (I know some people are squeamish about these things, so I won’t include details like ‘snapped’ or ‘ripped clean off’ or ‘my foot doesn’t work anymore’.) I was out one night with friends, and as we left one pub for another, I had a single job: to walk to the next venue in a safe and orderly manner. Instead, I decided to give my friend a piggyback. And then, start running. Idiot.

What happened next involved those details I’ve chosen to omit. And hospital.

After a period of recovery, I had a floppy foot due to significant nerve damage. I would see my (floppy) foot doctor once a month, and our appointment usually went something like this:

Doctor: “Can you move your foot?” Me: “No.”

Doctor: “OK… see you in a month.”

Eventually, after 12 monthly visits costing $100 a pop, Doctor Extortion explained that the damage I did meant my nerve would never fully heal, and I’d likely never regain use of my foot. Information that would have been better shared $1200 ago.

Not too long after, I was at the beach with friends, and my wonky walk made me stand out from the crowd. (That, and my bright yellow togs.) I was approached by a stranger, who asked about my foot. Despite feeling quite selfconscious, I explained that I’d damaged my common peroneal nerve and had foot drop. He responded with wide eyes and a shit-eating smile; I was both taken aback and intrigued by his buggered-foot-based glee. It turns out old mate was excited because he, too, had floppy foot and supposedly knew a guy who could fix it.

Now, I don’t usually take people seriously when they start a sentence with, “I know a guy” – plus, Dr Extortion had made it quite clear you can’t fix nerves – but this random beach stranger talked enthusiastically about his “guy”, so I thought I’d hear what he had to say. He told me of a foot doctor who performs a type of surgery that transfers a tendon from one part of your foot to another that isn’t affected by the damaged nerve. Sort of like Renovation

Rescue, but with body parts.

To make the chance meeting with this guy even more unusual, the doctor had only ever performed the surgery once before. On him. He grabbed a piece of paper, wrote down the doctor’s name and wished me luck. Then he was off. Confidently sauntering off along the beach like a sand-covered angel.

I did end up contacting the doctor’s office, but his receptionist said she wasn’t aware of the footbased renovation I was describing. Nevertheless, she took my details and assured me she would write a note and leave it for him.

Two weeks later, he called. It turned out beach guy wasn’t fibbing, and foot doctor guy did indeed know him. We booked a consultation. When we met, he too was pretty excited about my floppy foot. (What is it with these people?) He told me he was the only doctor in the country doing the procedure, and he couldn’t promise it would work, but he’d love to have a crack.

20 years later, the foot still works a bloody treat.

What I really like about that beach day and my chance meeting with the foot-focused stranger is that he didn’t have to be kind. He could have just gone about his day, and he’ll never really know how significant his gesture was. The thing I hate most about that day is the salesperson at the surf shop who let me buy bright yellow togs. Not cool.

By Eleanor Robertson -

I’ve met a lot of weird strangers in my life. There was the leather jacket-sporting British tourist a friend of a friend met at a bus stop and brought to a house party I was attending, who spent most of the evening drunkenly arguing that he should be permitted to climb Uluru. Or the middle-aged man who tried to pick me up at a local RSL club by telling me I should stop reading so many books, because women’s brains are not big enough to absorb that much information. Or the hairdresser who spent an hour regaling me with the genuinely captivating story of her recent divorce from the heir of a multinational snack foods company. It featured several extramarital affairs on his part, some of which had involved her own sisters.

These were all memorable incidents, but it takes me some mental effort to recall the details. Over the years, these strangers’ faces have blurred around the edges, or disappeared entirely – most of the remaining memory I have of RSL pick-up guy is his thick and plentiful arm hair, which was offset beautifully by several chunky gold wrist chains.

The only stranger interaction I’ve had where I can still recall each detail with Swarovski-crystal clarity is the time I met a onearmed serial-killer profiler at Sydney Airport Mcdonald’s.

I was flying down to Melbourne for some reason – I can’t recall exactly why, which means it was probably for sex purposes and my brain has erased the particulars as a form of self-preservation. As I unwrapped my traditional airport Macca’s breakfast sandwich, breathing in the greasy funk of pre-formed sausage patty, a middle-aged man asked if he could share my table. I said sure,

of course, and he sat down. He asked where I was off to, and we ended up talking about where he’d just flown in from – Saudi Arabia, where he’d apparently been employed to profile an incarcerated serial killer.

“Is that something you do often?” I asked. It seemed like a weird thing for him to make up, and his calm, slightly clinical demeanour could very well have been acquired in order to gain the trust of twisted serial killers. “Oh yes, that’s my job,” he replied. “How, uhh, how do you find it?” I asked. I think at this stage my lack of sleep the night before, combined with the truly surreal nature of the conversation, started to catch up with me. I can’t imagine what my facial expression must’ve been – somewhere between ‘robot stuck in boot-up loop’ and ‘benevolent yet terrified’.

He told me he couldn’t share many details at the minute, but did I want to have dinner sometime in Sydney and talk about it? What a question. I replied yes, and gave him my number. Then I realised my flight had started boarding five minutes earlier, grabbed all my junk and ran away, waving over my shoulder.

While sitting on the plane waiting to take off, I googled every possible combination of keywords I could think of to find this guy. All I knew was his first name and that he was a serial-killer profiler, but I kept going until the flight attendant shot me one of the worst greasy looks I’ve ever received in my life. I put my phone away and promptly forgot about the entire thing for several weeks.

A while later he rang me, and I missed the call. I’ve long since lost the scrap of paper I wrote his number on. I have a distinct,

Sliding Doors-type feeling that, had I picked up the phone, my life might’ve turned out quite a bit differently. As it is, all I have is this weird story of the time I met a one-armed serial-killer profiler at Sydney Airport Mcdonald’s.

By Caro Cooper -

My sister’s car had a stiff clutch. You had to really work your thighs to get it working. On the day I met this memorable stranger, after a morning at the beach, eating fish and chips and ice-cream, I was in no state to keep the clutch in through more than one refrain of Hole’s “Celebrity Skin”. That’s why I found myself sitting at the traffic lights, my sister in the passenger seat, wondering why the traffic alongside me was ever so slowly drifting backwards. Then I heard a dull thwack and felt a small bump. I looked down at the shiny, black, brand-new BMW I’d ever so slowly rolled into.

The car’s door flew open and a woman-shaped cloud of rage with a blonde bouffant and leopard print pedal-pushers flew out of the driver’s seat. She stormed to inspect her bumper and gesticulated at me, directing me to pull over – people like her ‘direct’, they don’t suggest. They

Trained from a young age in obsequiousness, I obeyed. demand to see the manager.

My sister and I got out of the car, the pair of us mottled with salt from the ocean, feet bare and wearing the cutoff military shorts of our generation. My sister had short, messy hair – the kind that comes from allowing me to cut it with kitchen scissors for several years. Mine was a slightly longer, flaming red version of the same. The stranger approached us – her perfume preceded her – and the thick, red lacquer on her toenails glinted in the sun. Before she’d even stood upright in her espadrilles, she was screeching at me: “Do you know what you’ve done? This is a brand-new something-something BMW!” I flinched at her fury. I couldn’t see any damage. OK, maybe a tiny scratch.

The hate spewed from her glossy lips. I stopped listening and focused on the middle-aged man in the passenger seat of her car, facing forward and ignoring the fracas behind him. I imagined he was accustomed to these outbursts; that she was a yeller, and he’d long ago lost interest in diffusing situations. Maybe he’d lost interest in her completely. He probably had a mistress.

I pulled my focus back to the woman as she spat, “What are you even?” gesturing up and down my sister and I. What are we even? Did she mean are we sisters? Are we homos? Are we homeless? What are we even – she was way ahead of me on my existential journey. I wished I had some witty comeback, but now I was angry. We snapped back in chorus, but it was a barrage of rubber bullets – she didn’t flinch.

It’s fair for people to be upset when I damage their property. I’m clumsy, so I’m used to it. Though to spin off into hateful, homophobic vitriol over a ding a quarter of the size of the diamond on her pinky was surprising. I’d be sued, I’d be bankrupted, she yelled. I was a 20-year-old student with a supermarket job and no savings. She didn’t care.

Angry people want to be angry. Money and expensive cars and diamonds the size of the Ritz can’t dissolve that rage. She taught me that. People hate what they don’t understand – she taught me that, as well. But I taught her something, too. The woman pulled out a Louis Vuitton notebook and uncapped her pen to take my details. My sister tugged on my hand and nodded her head at the woman’s hand: it was the familiar maroon and gold pen my father gave every client at his law firm. His logo shone out at me between her swollen knuckles. Of all the cars in all the cities, I had to run into one of Dad’s clients.

The angry woman learnt that day that you can be mean to the small people in the world, but that won’t make you happy and it won’t make you rich and you may even find yourself in need of a new lawyer, because lawyers are loyal to their clients, but they’re even more loyal to their weak-thighed, bedraggled, misfit daughters.