Conversation With a Stranger

Recently, I was in a meeting, and after the official hours ended, members usually stayed to catch up and chat a bit. one girl came up with a random question. It was something like: what is something a stranger has told you that stuck with you? It wasn’t too long until that moment that I realized I actually had one.

I remember that day in my life very clearly, and I still remember it often. The fact that I keep revisiting that day every now and then means it was profound to me. I don’t want to forget it. I already forgot the stranger I met and the exact dialogue, but I never forgot how he made me feel. unfortunately, only parts of it still live in my memory, and they get blurrier as I grow up. Still, I will say what I am able to remember.

The context of me at that time was that I was maybe fifteen or sixteen. I was very pessimistic, and I didn’t love that part of my life very much. I had no one around me to sit down with me and tell me some real shit that I needed to hear about life, goals, wounds, healing, and the importance of having a degree. Just some random real talk you would say to your kid when you feel he is lost. I was lost, but I never made a sign that I was. I never asked for help.

I had friends whom I used to walk with back home from high school. I would stop at a bus station so they could take a bus, and from there I was the only one whose home was within walking distance, so I usually walked alone. that time, I remember there was a man in his stopped van. he used it as a transportation vichle, but either he was waiting for something or he was waiting in a queue for gas. we used to have gas scarcity back in Sudan. I don’t remember the exact series of actions that led to me and the man talking to each other in the first place, but I remember that most of the conversation happened after he invited me into his car. I set in the front seat with him, and the man started to talk.

he was light skinned, with white hair and a beard, very respectful. he wasn’t talking nonsense. he didn’t seem like someone who usually talk, because the kind of conversation we had was a bit odd for something you would find in public. we talked about high school and university, and he told me how important it is to get a degree. It’s not that I had started to lose faith in the educational system, but I needed to hear this. he held a degree himself. I can’t remember in what major, but he told me it was the reason why he was intellectual compared to the environment around him.

he then shifted to some real life lessons he had learned. they were not nonsense, and maybe for the first time, I had sat down with an elderly person and didn’t feel the need to filter what he was saying. I had spoken with many elderly people before, and with basic teenage critical thinking, I could usually filter a lot of nonsense and a desire to just talk. but this time was different.

Then he randomly started talking about how to overcome challenges and how great things might be waiting on the other side. I remember I felt present during the conversation. I knew what I was experiencing. I knew it was something I really wanted to hear someone talking about, to me, I absorbed every word he said and listened carefully. what he said stuck with me because I needed to hear something like that, and it came from a bus driver, a stranger I had never met before and never met again.

I managed to get his phone number and name. He resided in a nearby neighborhood. The name is now lost among many others in my notes. I had a very bad note-taking system, so I can’t know which name and phone number belonged to him. I thought of visiting him when I entered university, but I didn’t.