24 And An Oil Change

So, I rag on Pittsburgh a LOT. Most everyone who's read this has heard me complain about either the weather, the crazy streets, the even crazier drivers, or the intensely annoying sports fans.

I will say this, though. Pittsburgh has the friendliest waiting rooms I've ever run into. Every single time I've been at a Dr's office or getting work done on my car or anything like that, I've noticed people just generally treating each other like humans.

In NOVA, there's a waiting room protocol. Basically, it says "Sit there quietly with your head down, preferably in a newspaper or magazine, and don't make eye contact. If there's a T.V., it's okay to watch as long as you aren't too obvious about it." Making eye contact usually gets translated to "I'm creepy; wanna mace me?"

In Pittsburgh, people talk. In a Dr's office waiting room recently, I watched two old ladies start comparing crochet strategies. Today I was getting some maintenance done on my car, and this middle aged man started talking with some lady about his car and insurance company. There was an Indian dude sitting near me who struck up a conversation with me about CMU (I was wearing a CMU sweatshirt and had my wrecking ball I mean backpack with me.) The funniest part happened at 2:00. The middle aged man checked his watch, and then said something like "Does anyone mind if I change the channel on the T.V.? Every afternoon at 2, Jack Bauer saves the world on A&E, and I'm addicted."

Most of us sitting there told him to go ahead and change it. The lady he'd been talking to immediately started complaining about "those violent shows" and how she prefers to watch things that make her laugh, or that have a happy ending. She was quietly overruled, and we all sat there watching 24 anyhow, with her making the occasional snide comment about how she wasn't paying ANY attention to it at all.

It was great. It was like some scene out of a dysfunctional family comedy. I've never, ever, seen complete strangers interact with each other on such a comfortable, casual level before. I think a lot of religions talk somewhat about that - about finding the "me" in every "you" and learning to recognize it, address it, interact with it, without even trying. I also think that a lot of people take that philosophy to inappropriate extremes, whether it be with loose sexual behaviors, or even worse - with that "I'm nice to everyone, because I'm a [xyz denomination] and that's what we do! Look at me being nice!!!LOL!!!ONE11" attitude. I contend that the highest respect you can pay someone is to just simply address them as a fellow human being without affectation or pretense.

I guess I should clarify that a bit, before I start coming across like some Marxist hippie weirdo (I kid, I kid). This isn't an argument for a classless society or for us to start addressing each other as "comrade" or anything else. Things like that seem just as forced and affected as a lot of other religious nuts' behavior. If anything, this is an argument to start trying LESS to "diversity" and "appreciate differences" (which really just leads to a lot of affectation) and to just - be, and let others be too.