"Mr. Jones"

Well, today has already been quite the roller coaster.

I took my car in to get checked out this morning, and after two hours they finally came in to tell me what was wrong. To completely fix the problem, it will cost $2,000. To fix it just enough to get by, they wanted $1,000. My dad just told them to let it go and now mom is on her way to Bloomington to pick up the car and they'll try to fix it at home. I'm really not completely sure what's going on, to be perfectly honest. Reason#462456 I should learn more stuff about cars.

While I was waiting, an older man came into the waiting area and just started talking to me, which was actually really cool. I wasn't doing anything terribly productive anyway because I just kept falling asleep while I was trying to read, so it was nice to have a real conversation to pass the time. We wound up talking for about an hour about political correctness, coal vs. natural gas, his career as an electrician, the benefits of union labor, and the stock market. Then we got to talk about technology and how it makes us less able to talk. And then I started thinking...

I can't talk to people.

And I'd venture to guess that you can't either.

This man, whom I've never met, just sat down and started talking to me. He had absolutely no inhibitions about the conversation, he just started talking and I started listening. And as the conversation went on, I started to get more comfortable. But the point is that I was completely unable to match this man's comfort level with the situation. And thats what he was talking about--in the age of Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, cell phones, and everything else that keep us separated, we've lost the ability to have a conversation. With conversations you know more about the person because you get to see their facial expressions, and you know what they mean when they say things, and you can tell when they're comfortable and uncomfortable.

And then I realized another thing...

The deepest conversation I've had this year has been with a complete stranger.

And I know more about this man than I do most of my friends. He's a retired electrician who has worked in the construction industry his whole life. He wanted to work on a farm, but he could never do it because there was no money in it, and to buy a farm it would take millions without ever gaining that money back, which is why farms stay in families. He has two daughters that have grown up and gone through college. When he was out of work for a while, he used his union connections to get a job in Maine, where he worked on a paper mill that's automated to the point that it only takes six people to run the entire mill. He's just got on Medicare and he messed up his back through the course of his career, so he has a problem with one of his discs, and Medicare is making him go through the more evasive procedures before they'll actually let him fix the problem. He invested in the stock market when the recession hit, and now he's making a lot of money off the stocks that he bought, but he invested in Citi which wound up being a bad idea because they're not going anywhere. He told me to keep an eye on Alcoa, because they'll be coming back soon. He likes to travel, and he told me about this little place in Wisconsin near the Frank Lloyd Wright estate, where this guy just collects collections of other things. One of his favorite parts about it was this massive carousel with over 365 unique animals. He drives a Mazda, and he had an Escape before that and a Ranger before that. He likes the Mazda because it's kind of sporty, but it's got all-wheel drive so he can get around when he goes home, since he lives in a hilly part of the area.

That isn't even half of the stuff we talked about either, and I don't think that I could write that much about the people I've lived with in the last few years if I tried.

I don't think I'll ever see this man again. To add to the obscurity, his name is Mr. Jones--one of the most common names in the book. And I never got to thank him for talking to me, thanks to the timing of the news on my car and his car being taken care of as well. So thank you, Mr. Jones, for teaching me more about life in an hour and a half than I could've imagined.

And I'll be keeping an eye on Alcoa.