Day 31: Paul

I'm at the standing bar in Tasty n Alder waiting for my food. I look to my left and there's a guy waiting for his food, just using his phone.

Without contemplating if I "should" ask him, or how, I just do it.

"Hey. I'm going to ask you to do something unusual. While you wait, will you make eye contact with me for 60 seconds?"

"Uh... Sure!"

"Cool. When we start: no looking away and no talking. I have a timer."

"Oh, wow, you really do have a timer." "Can you tell me why we're doing this?"

"After we're done. OK, ready? Here we go."

We begin. Almost immediately...

"Can we talk at the same time?"

"Nope."

A few seconds later...

"Can I talk?"

"Nope."

I smile.

He smiles and laughs throughout the session. It seems like more than a minute to me. Still, I enjoy it a lot.

We're done. He asks which eye I was looking at. "Your left, and then your right," I answer. He says he was looking at my left eye.

I give him a card. I answer his "why" question. I introduce myself and he introduces himself as Paul.

He says he was laughing, at least in part, because his lunch companion, who was outside on a business call, saw what we were doing when he looked in the window, and was perplexed. Paul has a good story to share with him.

We have a really pleasant conversation. Paul's companion returns, and I move to a seat at the bar.

I was feeling a bit unmotivated this morning and had some negative self-talk going on. Now, though? I'm super-charged.

Thanks, Paul!