the guessing game

Travel allows for odd encounters, especially when there is dead time to fill: waiting in an airport or sailing across the Tasman Sea, you find yourself talking to people you wouldn’t ordinarily notice. Sometimes these random encounters are with locals, especially in countries (Chile comes to mind) where being foreign attracts curiosity. While other times, you end up talking to other foreigners. (I never met more Israelis than in India!) And for some reason, I am one of those people random strangers likes to talk to. I always have been and I have never understood why.
I also like observing people from afar, and then trying to establish if my presumptions were indeed correct. I think it is based on a weird game my mother, aunt and I used to play when I was little in cafes in Paris. We would stake out a café in an area likely to attract a mix of people and try to imagine their backgrounds. This was probably all invented to keep me still and quiet long enough for them to enjoy their coffee and cakes, but the habit somehow stuck with me. But I still make egregious errors in my assumptions. The other day I saw a man who looked like me image of the stereotypical American monster. Potbellied, dressed all in denim (with those horrid, huge white trainers they only sell in the US), and wearing a baseball cap in public. I couldn’t resist, I walked over and started a conversation. Sure enough, he was from Texas (no surprise there) but when I asked about (the now thankfully out of power) Bush, I got a surprise. “That bastard was the biggest embarrassment the state ever suffered.” A long speech on Bush’s (many) failures followed. I was a bit taken aback- I had got the location, but totally misjudged the man.
Other times, I am more accurate. Sitting down in the breakfast room, I looked over to see a fellow who immediately triggered a bell in my head indicating ‘Australian for sure, probably from the Gold Coast.’ As it turned out, I was spot on. When the fellow got up to leave (after telling us loudly about surfers’ paradise and the time he got caught coming out of the wrong bedroom, oops, end of that marriage), the rather quiet Kiwi who had been (literally) sitting in his shadow asked me why God had not been born in Australia. “Why?” I asked, as required. “because they couldn’t find three wise men or a virgin.” Ouch. I supposed even in this globalised age, stereotypes are still alive and well.
And then there is D. D exudes quiet confidence. When he speaks (quietly, never raising his voice), everyone stops to listen. Whenever a leader is needed to represent others, people just automatically look to him. When he sits down to gamble, he wins 1,000 dollars the first move, and quits. His suits are of the highest quality, his wife is immaculate (in her 70s) and even after several chats with them, I have no clue what he did when he was working. Looking at him, he could be any nationality, and although he is clearly an older gentleman, he could be 65 or 85, you really cant tell. Now there is my idol- a true man of mystery.