David Meets David

Tonight was a little bit of an awakening, to what I'm not sure yet.

We decided to have a little post dinner family adventure to Barnes and Noble, so we piled in the car, stopped at an errand on the way, and found ourselves in a wonderland of information and visual stimulation. After a little bit of time at the bookstore we decided to head home to get Christian ready for bed. 

Back to the car, Christian was buckled in, I took my seat and David was just about to enter when a voice behind him asks what sort of exhaust he has on his car. Immedietly I start thinking what to do if David gets shot. (Yeah, I'm no drama queen or anything.) I couldn't see the guy's face, just that he was about David's height and of a strong build... we're doomed. I was just holding my breath waiting for a reason for this guy to be standing there conversing with my husband in a dark parking lot, but the conversation non-sensically kept going. The guy asked David where he worked and then introduced himself (the nerve!!), and coincidentally we had another David on our hands. In the 3-4 awkward conversational minutes they discussed cars, where the guy was from (Chicago), jobs, and realized they had some general commonalities (the name part helped). The guy walked away, David sat in the driver's seat, and I let my proverbial breath out. 

So then it hit me, this guy was friend starved. He needed somebody. So I got David psyched up thinking he might save this guy's life, since the only reason a guy would approach us and talk to him for no reason might be that God was sending him to us to be saved (I'm not only a drama queen, I'm an egocentric drama queen). So, I rip a page out of a notebook, make David write his name and number on it, and send him in with the conversational advice that he should invite the guy out for a drink with us sometime (ingenious!). 

Hesitantly, and most likely a little self-consciously because of all my prodding, David marched back into Barnes and Noble where the guy had disappeared to on a mission to save this man's life.
*Spoiler alert: this story is about to take an embarrassing turn, as if it hadn't already.*
So anyway, a very short while later David emerges out of B&N and I knew our earthly mission was completed.
He sat down and I said "So?! How did it go?"

David: "I wasn't going to walk up to him, he was at a table with a group of friends, that would be awkward."

*Gasp!* This guy has friends?! You mean to tell me this NICE, FRIENDLY, TALKATIVE, APPROACHABLE and TOTALLY SAFE young man has friends?! We were not meant to save his life? I bet you didn't see this coming.

What I think really happened here was we were awakened to our own superior stupidity. We talked nearly the whole rest of the way home (Ok, so only a 5-6 minute drive) about the humor in the situation. And then it confirmed how sordid our relational minds have become. Are we surrounded by an environment that despises pleasantries that much that we think someone would have to be suicidal to want to speak to us? (Please join me in laughing, the alternative is crying here). OR, are we the problem? Do we neglect others by not reaching out, not being nice/friendly/approachable/talkative that we would find it odd for someone else to be? 

I'll leave you with that to chew on. Like I said, I don't know what all this means, or what the verdict is. Something's gotta give, because I want to live a full life, and that includes other people, strangers and long time friends -- and it definitely includes being approachable and approaching others with kind and simple intent.