Strangers

Somehow we have been forced into a vision of a stranger as a person that wants to stab us, steal our items, and bag our wife while they are drinking the last beer in the refrigerator while we are at work. We seem to set up strangers as monsters in the fairy tale we keep in our mind as a good life. Is it all just the media and marketers teaching me to fear everyone so they can sell items to every single person instead of lessening their profits by the horror we might share things? There are millions of these strangers around me. I can’t help but wonder how I have even lived a week with all these vile creatures constantly circling me like a shark waiting for me to look away. They are here to take my iPod, then foul my shoes and must be stopped. Damn you, unfamiliar person, what unspeakable evil do you plan against me?

As I leave the gun store with the promise I can have a handgun once I stop screaming, I try to recall what made me so afraid in the first place. Then I think back to the moments of my life and see what hurt me and why. I know I am responsible for my life, but there are other characters in the story. It was the best friend who needed a place to stay and played Sancho with the girl I thought to marry. It was the family that was so self-consumed; they never saw the child that needed guidance. It was the friend who borrowed my stereo and then pawned it. It was the high school friend who knew who robbed my house, but didn’t tell me because he didn’t want me to know he was hanging out with an ex-girlfriend. They were all terrible moments, but not a stranger to be found.

They did me no harm. If they stole my wallet, would it be worse then what a close friend could do? God bless strangers. They don’t know me well enough to really hurt me.