Awakening

So I just finished interviewing a hundred strangers.

A hundred.

At 69 years old.

Do you know what most 69-year-old men are doing?

Golf.

Pickleball.

Checking their blood pressure.

Arguing with somebody at Costco because the rotisserie chicken moved three aisles.

Not me.

I’m wandering around Greensboro approaching complete strangers with a camera.

Which, when you say it out loud, sounds less like a documentary and more like something that eventually requires an ankle monitor.

But I had this idea.

I wanted to find out what people really think about America.

Not CNN.

Not Fox News.

Not politicians.

Actual human beings.

So I started walking up to strangers.

“Excuse me, can I ask you four questions?”

And immediately you learn something about humanity.

People have three responses.

“Yes.”

“No.”

And—

“What the fuck are you selling?”

Nothing!

I’m not selling anything.

I’m just a 69-year-old man with a camera who’d like to ask you some personal questions.

Apparently that explanation does not help.

But people started saying yes.

And something incredible happened.

They talked.

Young people.

Old people.

Black people.

White people.

Gay people.

Straight people.

Conservatives.

Liberals.

People with tattoos.

People with green hair.

People dressed like bankers.

People dressed like they’d just escaped Burning Man.

And here’s what shocked me.

Everybody wants basically the same shit.

They want enough money to live.

A safe place to live.

Healthcare.

Good schools.

A decent future for their kids.

And they would really appreciate it if the government could go approximately fifteen fucking minutes without embarrassing them.

That’s America!

We don’t actually disagree about everything.

We’ve just been convinced that we do.

Then something even stranger happened.

I started realizing how much I judge people.

I interviewed this young woman with tattoos and bright green hair.

And before she opened her mouth, my 69-year-old brain went:

“Oh boy. Here we go.”

Then she starts talking.

She’s brilliant.

Articulate.

Thoughtful.

I’m standing there thinking:

“Holy shit. I’ve been alive 69 years and apparently I just discovered you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

My mother told me that when I was five.

It only took me 64 years and a hundred interviews to independently verify the research.

Then I went to Pride.

Now there’s a great place to talk to strangers.

Everybody wanted to talk.

Everybody’s smiling.

Everybody’s celebrating.

And I’m walking around thinking:

“Why the hell haven’t I been doing this my whole life?”

Because the weirdest thing about talking to people who aren’t like you…

is you find out they’re people.

That’s fucking inconvenient.

Because hatred is much easier when nobody introduces themselves.

It’s easy to hate “those people.”

Much harder when “those people” become:

“Oh, that’s Steve.”

Steve’s got two kids.

Steve’s worried about his mortgage.

Steve’s mother has cancer.

Steve loves the Panthers.

Now I can’t hate Steve.

Goddammit.

I just met the son of a bitch.

And somewhere around interview number 70, I realized something else.

I wasn’t interviewing them anymore.

They were interviewing me.

Every conversation was forcing me to look at what I believed.

What I assumed.

Who I trusted.

Who I was afraid of.

And I started feeling…

better.

Safer.

More comfortable.

More connected.

Which is bizarre because we’re constantly being told:

“Be careful of strangers.”

Remember that?

Your mother told you:

“Don’t talk to strangers.”

Apparently that’s the worst fucking advice America ever received.

Because we listened!

We stopped talking to strangers.

Then we invented social media so we could scream at them from home.

Perfect!

Now I think we need a National Talk to a Stranger Day.

One day.

Everybody in America has to talk to somebody they don’t know.

Five minutes.

No politics required.

No arguing.

No trying to change their mind.

Just:

“Hi. Who the hell are you?”

Of course, somebody reminded me of Kramer on Seinfeld trying to make New York friendlier with name tags.

And that didn’t exactly work out.

So there is a possibility this entire thing ends with me standing alone in LeBauer Park wearing a name tag that says:

JOHN — PLEASE TALK TO ME.

But here’s the thing.

I started this project thinking I was going to discover what’s wrong with America.

After a hundred conversations, I’m starting to think I discovered something else.

Maybe America isn’t nearly as fucked up as we’ve been told.

Maybe we’re just disconnected.

Maybe we’ve been staring at screens so long that we’ve forgotten there’s an actual human being on the other side.

And maybe the solution isn’t another political party.

Another television network.

Another fucking podcast.

Maybe occasionally…

we just need to walk across the room.

So here’s my challenge.

Talk to a hundred strangers.

Not people you agree with.

Not people who look like you.

Strangers.

See what happens.

Because I did it at 69 years old.

And I went looking for what’s wrong with America.

Instead…

I found a hundred people.

And somewhere along the way—

I found a version of myself I didn’t know was still in there.

Which is pretty fucking good.

Although I still don’t play golf.