I am reminded of a Dorothy Sayers short story in which Peter Wimsey tells a new-met acquaintance on a train that that's what total strangers are for, to tell things to.
Because if you tell a relative, or a friend, or the supermarket cashier (especially in a small town or in your own neighborhood in a city), you then are asking or expecting the amount of trust you refer to. If you tell a complete stranger on a train, who you'll never see again, you can get it off your chest, maybe even get some insight into the weird thing that happened, without that ongoing relationship.
Not everyone wants to be that confidante, of course, nor is obliged to be. And it's a risky thing and more of an imposition if there's any likelihood of seeing the person again, because there's no room for the ordinary getting-to-know-a-person stuff, and because if they run into you again, it stops being "I ran into this guy on a train in Kowloon, and he told me this really weird story." (For me, it can be Kowloon--if the speaker lived in Hong Kong, it would have to be Ealing or the Bronx or Kathmandu.)
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Date: 2006-01-27 04:10 am (UTC)Because if you tell a relative, or a friend, or the supermarket cashier (especially in a small town or in your own neighborhood in a city), you then are asking or expecting the amount of trust you refer to. If you tell a complete stranger on a train, who you'll never see again, you can get it off your chest, maybe even get some insight into the weird thing that happened, without that ongoing relationship.
Not everyone wants to be that confidante, of course, nor is obliged to be. And it's a risky thing and more of an imposition if there's any likelihood of seeing the person again, because there's no room for the ordinary getting-to-know-a-person stuff, and because if they run into you again, it stops being "I ran into this guy on a train in Kowloon, and he told me this really weird story." (For me, it can be Kowloon--if the speaker lived in Hong Kong, it would have to be Ealing or the Bronx or Kathmandu.)