Wednesday, March 4, 2009

People Watching / The Wonders of Campaigning

I think that people are amazing! Like, I think that instead of just putting ‘Computer skills’, ‘video games’ and ‘hanging out’ the hobbies section of random questionnaires, I should start adding People Watching.  Let me give you a perfect example.  On Monday, I was helping out with James and Leo’s Campaigning for BYUSA.  My glorious role was to stop and talk to people walking around the JFSB.  Classic! It was like being right back on the mission.  People are by nature curious, but are afraid of getting hounded or annoyed, so in my case they would look over and try to figure out what I was doing, without making eye contact.  Lets just say it didn’t work. 

You’d have a cool looking girl squint at the sign, realize I saw  her, and immediately pretend she saw nothing. HA, well I’d ½ jog over to her and with a smile that said ‘busted’ would give her a flyer along with some brief information.  Or you’d have the double header scenario, where you’d have one person about 8 feet ahead of another. I’d run over to the person in the front to talk to them, while the person in back smirks because they think they dodged a bullet. I don’t think so chief!  I’d turn and hand out that second flyer, and actually focus my comments on that back person.   There would also be those really determined people that walked about a minute out of their way just to avoid a piece of paper.  What I found interesting especially were the people that by noon, after walking past 4 other groups of crazed campaigners, had no idea what was going on, and were totally willing to stop and talk to me.  I’ll admit they were wearing headphones, but seriously, how out of it can you be with all of this going on! 

Another classic people watching moment is the bus.  Let me illustrate for those not experienced with mass-transit.   I’m not even going to comment on the rank and file crazies that ride the bus, but instead, I’m going to focus on the infamous front seat.  See, I’m sure driving a bus 40 hours a week is about as interesting as the business law section of the library.  The reason why I guess this is because bus drivers will talk about the most ridiculously boring and mundane things to kill time.  The only reason there aren’t more sleeping bus drivers is the horrible seats they sit in, as described to me in exquisite detail by one such bus driver last night.  I’ve even tried to sit farther back in the bus when I’m the only one, as to avoid those conversations, but the bus driver will yell to you about things over the whine of the engine, until you give up on thought, and move to that front seat.  Don’t assume that my feelings are universal however, because there are people who jockey for the position, excited to tell that bus driver about the quarter they found, or the solution to the nation’s most complex economic problems.  Hmm, this is alittle long, so I’ll stop here for today….

3 comments:

  1. a) people watching is one of the funnest things ever
    b) I usually fit into the category of the person who walks a minute out of their way to avoid the flyer people---they need more people like you, because I soon learned that I can save time by simply not making eye contact. 70% of the time it works just fine
    c) it's even cooler when you are on the bus with people and you have a trax transfer and you get to watch them in a completely different environment. As scary as some of the bus people may look, they are oddly friendly most of the time!
    d) I think bus drivers get lonely and they have to talk to anybody and everybody to keep from becoming schizophrenic--I had an awesome bus driver in Oklahoma, however, I think he was smoking something. Nonetheless, he was hilarious and sang a lot.
    e) welcome to the world of blogging. It's not quite as ridiculous as facebook yet, but i think it is slowly getting there....
    f) nice background--I remember when you showed me that

    ReplyDelete
  2. good job for giving in to the blogging world. You are welcome to read mine any day. 3 of us in our apartment have blogs so it is fun to check up on what they say and write my own fun.

    yea, campaigning for James and Leo was fun. I did all three days of it.

    ReplyDelete