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….