Social Isolation and New Technology

I took the bus to beautiful Downtown Burbank.  Had a really good meeting with Todd Hampson and Sean Copley of www.timbuktoons.com (who will hopefully be hiring me to score their cartoons in the near future – fingers crossed).  After a nice meal at Granville where I had the Thai salad with peanuts and mango and just the right amount of spiciness and some bread on the side with a refreshing glass of Arnold Palmer, I went back to the bus stop.  (I recommend the Thai salad).

Found a seat at the stop, put my headphones on to practice my intervals with Music Theory Pro app (available from Apple's app store and highly recommended for music students and pro musicians alike), when an older gentleman approached me...

I took my earphones off, looked at him expectantly, his mouth opened slowly in that faltering kind of way as if he got nervous or plain forgot what he was going to say....

I broke the silence with, "How are you?" hopefully shaking up his hesitation.

"Good," he seemed to sigh with a little smile. Then he asked slowly, "Do you happen to know the definition of the word minutia?"

Turns out we were catching the same bus and we talked all the way to my stop.  He told me he asked me about minutia because I looked intelligent.  I asked if my glasses made me look intelligent, and he insisted it's something else that he can just tell about a person.

When I asked why he was curious about the word minutia in particular, he said that his ex-wife was a very articulate woman and would use words like that.  "But, oh, did she have a temper.  She took prescription drugs, and the drugs had steroids.  And, of course, steroids can give a person a mighty temper."  They eventually divorced, and she is now passed away.  Henry works as a janitor somewhere in Burbank.

In case you were curious.

It was such a random question for him to ask me.  I suspect that he just wanted to talk to somebody, maybe in particular to talk to someone about his ex-wife.  However, he also said that as a janitor, he works alone.  "And what's the hardest part about working?" he asked me as if the answer were obvious. "Other people!" he answered.  Did he really mean that?  Does he really want to avoid other people when he seems to miss his ex-wife enough to talk to a stranger about her?  When he seems ready to start a conversation with a total stranger on the pretext of being curious about the definition of a word he happened to be thinking of?  I wonder if he came up with that question only after his faltered attempt at starting a conversation which I saved by asking, "How are you?"

Maybe like all of us, he's had some bad experiences with people and is grateful to have a job where he works alone, but, at other times, he feels the need for connection.  And, what do we have that can be a good starting point for a conversation?  What's a good piece of common ground to randomly ask a question about?  Language is one thing, I suppose.  Then again, I wouldn't ask anybody a question like that because I have a smartphone.  And if you have a smartphone with internet for all your questions, why talk to anyone?  Right?