December 18, 2015 at one of my favorite coffee shops in town, I met this guy named Morgan. And if that isn’t intriguing enough, he was a fairly attractive blonde hipster with a man bun. But actually, the first intriguing thing about him was his laptop. The outside cover of it was painted with an array of acrylics. A blue and an orange shade just meshed over and brushed was covering the surface of his laptop—no cover or case. My first impression was that he’s a carefree art student because blue and orange are complementary colors and I figured it was a pretty clever choice as well, considering we’re in OKC and you know, Thunder. Well our first encounter was when I went to the bathroom; I messed up the code to get into the restroom and he trailed behind, heading for the dudes’ restroom and told me it was 1015. I said thanks and he just nodded. I was slightly embarrassed because I was doing this weird chicken-flamingo potty dance outside of the little ladies restroom looking like a complete fool. But when I returned my friends convinced me to talk to him about his laptop because they thought he was gorgeous and none of them had the grapes. Honestly, yes he was very attractive, but besides that wasn’t at the forefront of my intentions.
Since I lost the security of a “comfort zone” long ago when I decided my social anxiety wasn’t going to bound me, I simply approached him at his table and asked if he is an art student. Surprisingly he said “no, far from it actually.” He studied business instead, but now says he’s doing music. He went on about how he finished long ago, but struggles with writing lyrics. At this point in the conversation, my friends are behind him making kissy faces through the window and demonstrating “give me a ring” gestures. But what I loved about meeting this stranger was that he included me. Our dialogue was actually symbiotic and not just focused on him, who originally was the center subject, but made it a mutual discussion. He asked me about any lyric books I knew of and then showed me his poetry book that his girlfriend gave him (I was kind of embarrassed because he thought I was trying to hit on him, which is only slightly far from the truth because I’m actually just trying to meet new people and write about a stranger and how he made an impact). Besides, I was really impressed not just with his smile and fantastic man bun, but his first impression overall was kind and very welcoming. From the sighs in between him explaining his frustrations to me, down to the minutes he would lend me to share my true thoughts on writing style and instrumental contrast. Plus, I’m a very below par musician myself so it was pretty fantastic how we both could easily carry a conversation through a mutual passion. Again, this dude is a complete stranger, but here I am 17 minutes later talking about Erin Hanson and my high school creative writing teacher. What was even better is the answer I got when I asked him about the paint.
“So why did you paint your laptop? Were you just in a carefree artsy mood?”
He said, “No I was just painting a room with my friend and he burnt his mouth trying to eat a toasted Pop tart while painting, so he accidentally dripped some on my computer.” After discussing the importance of unfrosted blueberry Pop tarts for a good minute, I was also struck from left field when I asked him:
“What type of music do you do?” His response was,
“I actually rap.” Boom. All preconceived ideas of this simple, quiet trendy dude were completely obliterated. At first glance, he looks pretty shy and his eyes had some deep internal thought lingering just above his impeccable jawline. I made my assumptions in my head and decided, paint + man bun + messy jacket + cracked knuckles = artist. Not that kind of artist at all.
I was blown away at how skewed my judgment was.
Which brings me to the entire objective of this article: to flip judgment and blatantly say that we are wrong. People should never judge a book by it’s cover because we don’t know where they’ve been and what they’ve been through; who they are or where they’re going, but also to encourage bravery and challenge the reader to go out and meet a stranger. I try my very best to live by the saying “strangers are only friends we haven’t met yet.” So please I hope if you take anything from this, just get out there and meet a new friend.
