What was an interesting encounter or conversation you had with a stranger?

When I was a college student in America, I received two degrees. My main degree was in education, which I took so I could become a teacher. However, I also received a second degree in human development. Even though my education degree was more necessary and important to me for my studies, if I’m being honest, I enjoyed studying for my human development degree more. This is because I got to work in many interesting situations and with many interesting people while I was studying it. Most notably, we had to work with underprivileged groups to better study society and the human condition. This meant I got to do a lot of volunteer work.

Many situations we volunteered in were very sad, but you could always learn something valuable from the experience. A common group with whom we would volunteer was the homeless population, mostly in soup kitchens. The soup kitchens were different than other places in that the people benefiting from being there were usually very eager to speak to the volunteers. Most of the people in them were homeless individuals who had usually gone through some very difficult times in their life and were still having difficulty surviving.

I think because they were people who had gone through a lot and seen a lot, they were usually very interesting people to talk to if you took the time to get to know them. Personally, I’m a shy person and don’t reach out to others, but at the soup kitchen it was very easy to talk to others because it was usually people who were just looking for someone to listen to them. I met many interesting individuals there, some more pleasant than others, but the individual I met there that I remember the most was an elderly man who was perhaps in his 60s.

He told me he was not originally from California but had actually come from Texas. Like many others at the soup kitchen, he was eager to share his story and how he wound up homeless. He said in his youth, he had joined a bad group of people. He said he had trouble making friends as a child, so when he became a teenager and found a bad group who were willing to make friends with him, he took it. Unfortunately, this group eventually got him to commit crimes and he was arrested. He said his time in jail was difficult, but he learned his lesson because all his friends turned on him. His time in jail, he said, was especially difficult because his mental health deteriorated. When he came out, he said he was very mentally ill and could no longer take care of himself, so he was eventually hospitalized. His life there came to an end when the US government decided that mental health facilities of that type were to close down.

He said he suddenly found himself without a place to go. His family had stopped talking to him and his friends from before had disappeared. Even worse, he was still struggling with the mental condition he had developed in jail. This was when he went to the Texas office of social services. Unfortunately, he said they were not willing to offer much help, so they gave him the choice of going to California where social service offices were more helpful. Having nowhere else to go and nothing to look forward to, he said he took it and had been in the California system ever since. He now lived in a local church and often went to any soup kitchen that the church would send him to.

To me, that conversation was so powerful because it showed me how easily we are changed by our surroundings and how it’s usually the most sensitive people that are affected the most. Even though I’m sure he had made his mistakes, it was still very powerful to see someone who might’ve been a good person if he had lived a kinder life.

I still remember him to this day.

Dolores

Vocabulary

degree (noun) - the qualification obtained by students who successfully complete a university or college course

underprivileged (adjective) - having less money and fewer opportunities than most people in society

soup kitchen (noun) - a place where people who have no money can get food for free

eager (adjective) – to be very interested and excited by something you want to do

turn on (phrasal verb) - to change one’s attitude about another in a negative way

deteriorate (verb) - to become worse