{"id":1973,"date":"2018-04-16T07:21:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T11:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=1973"},"modified":"2018-04-16T09:05:35","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T13:05:35","slug":"perfect-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/perfect-strangers\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin<\/a>Every stranger is a potential friend. That\u2019s what I kept telling myself each day as I found excuses to put off the week\u2019s project: Stranger Portrait.<\/span><\/p>\n

Doing the assignment meant I\u2019d have to really look at a person who I didn\u2019t know. Most likely I\u2019d first need to ask permission to take a photograph. Who knows what else would take place after that, as I couldn\u2019t simply snap a dozen shots and then disappear without saying thank you. And in the process of thanking a stranger anything could happen. The scary thing about strangers isn\u2019t so much that you don\u2019t know them, but rather, that you don\u2019t know what they\u2019re capable of or how they might react to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

My world is full of strangers. The \u201cfriends\u201d on Facebook, who respond to my posts and sometimes tell me what I wrote touched them, are strangers. In the hospital, during my daughter\u2019s cancer, we constantly put ourselves in the hands of strangers. They CAT-scanned and radiated Marika inside out, took her vitals in the middle of the night. They came by with docile dogs, massaged her, showed me the secret broom closet where I could take a shower…. Complete strangers crocheted blankets for us.<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother used to tell me, Don\u2019t talk to strangers. And here I am, volunteering at Hospicare<\/a>, making quarterly phone calls to check in with the recently bereaved. People I rarely get to meet. The first call is always harrowing. Until I find this new person is as shy, or as scared, or as dazed by the challenges of being a living human, as I am.<\/span><\/p>\n

Apprehensive, but determined to do the photo assignment, I stood at the entrance to Wegmans<\/a> and, from a distance, snapped shoppers coming and going. Finally I got the nerve to get closer, and asked one of two guys moving long trains of carts, D\u2019you mind if I take your picture? He had red hair and looked safe in the camera\u2019s viewfinder. But suddenly there was a dark blast. The other guy had his hand up like he was going to slap me. He growled, Wegmans employees don\u2019t get photographed. I whimpered, Sorry, and slinked off to my car and drove to a nearby tiny storefront where I found a perfect stranger. She stood still smiling sweetly as I clicked the camera, only twice, and promised I\u2019d drop off a print if it came out well.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How did a stranger surprise you? What have you done for a stranger?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every stranger is a potential friend. That’s what I kept telling myself each day as I found excuses to put off the week’s project: Stranger Portrait. Doing the assignment meant I’d have to really look at a person who I didn’t know. Most likely I’d first need to ask permission to take a photograph. Who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1432],"tags":[1535,1536,1530,1531,1533,1532,1534,1537],"class_list":["post-1973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1432","tag-at-the-mercy-of-a-stranger","tag-dont-talk-to-strangers","tag-perfect-stranger","tag-phoning-strangers","tag-photography-portraits","tag-portraits-of-strangers","tag-strangers-are-friends","tag-strangers-help"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}