I have grappled with stranger danger for most of my life. I am shy. I am terrible at small talk. I would rather stick a dull, hot poker stick into the depths of my eyeballs than talk to someone about the weather or make idle chit chat with acquaintances over drinks at a party. Talking to strangers is not my thing AT ALL.
In my professional life however, over fourteen years of training and now an equally long career, talking to strangers has been a key ingredient to successfully caring for my patients. Discussing in depth personal and medical issues in a way that allows my patients to be comfortable and forthcoming is a skill I continue to practice. I must be able to connect with people to perform my duties effectively. Extracting the correct information from those I barely know is essential to making appropriate treatment decisions. If I do not ask the right questions, I might miss an important piece of information that could put my patient at risk.
My job would not be nearly as interesting if I stuck to medical questions. I often put extra effort into asking questions of my patients to help me remember them a little better. I like to know about their lives. I enjoy learning about what makes them stand out as individuals and what makes them experience joy. Every once and a while, I come across an unexpected treasure. Mr. B is one of these treasures.
Mr. B was sixty-three when we met. He had a host of other medical problems that would not end up being pertinent to this story. During medical investigations for a completely different issue, Mr. B was found to have a cancer of his bile ducts. The medical term for this type of cancer is cholangiocarcinoma.
Mr. B’s cancer was found by accident – a good kind of accident. His cancer had not yet spread beyond the bile ducts. Curative surgical resection was possible and was performed. Thereafter, Mr. B was referred to medical oncology for consideration of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy would be able to increase his chance of cure over that which was provided by surgery.
Mr. B did not have any family history of cancer. He was a retired bartender. He had a significant history of alcohol use disorder. At the time I met him he had been sober for over two years. He lived with his partner who was older and who was medically unwell.
The first thing I noticed about Mr. B was that he was a man who knew how to knit. Let me correct that: I thought he was knitting. I will admit that I am much more talented with a hook, some thread, and a small rip in human skin that needs a few stitches than I am with a needle, thread, and a loose button on my shirt. So, I thought what I saw was knitting.
When I walked into his examination room, he had two thin spokes in his hands and a bunch of material in his lap. He quickly put his hobby away in a grocery bag and hid it under the chair he was sitting in. I registered this but got on with the job I was in that room to do.
We went through the typical beginnings, middles, and ends of a first consultation. I asked Mr. B what happened to him, how he found out about his diagnosis, and if he currently had any left-over issues from his surgery. We discussed his other medical problems. I did a complete physical exam during which I found little to be concerned about. I then explained the pill chemotherapy drug recommended for his diagnosis. I told him about the potential side effects of these pills. If he wanted to proceed, he would have to take this chemotherapy twice a day for two weeks followed by a week without taking the pills. We would try to repeat this cycle eight times as long as all was going well.
When we both thought the consultation was over, but before I stood up to leave the room, I asked Mr. B what he was knitting. He stared at me blankly for several seconds. I got a little uncomfortable and pointed at the bag under his chair and asked again. It was rare for me to see a man knitting, I tried to explain, immediately realizing I had perhaps verbalized an inappropriate sexist stereotype.
He chuckled a little and told me he was not knitting. He was crocheting. He was crocheting a blanket.
I was immediately interested. A line of questioning ensued. I could not get enough information to satisfy my curiosity about Mr. B’s blanket world:
Is this a new hobby or something he has been doing for a while? A long while.
Was the blanket for himself or for someone else? Someone else.
Who was the someone else to him? A friend of a friend.
Does he crochet a lot of blankets? Yes.
How many? As many as he can.
How long does it take him to make a blanket? It depends on the size, the material, and the detail, but it could take thirty hours, but often more, of labour.
Does he give them away or does he sell them? A little of both.
Does he have a favourite blanket? Well, that turned into a complicated answer; each was special in its own way.
I am not sure how long we sat there while he patiently answered my questions. I am sure the medical student that was working with me that day was wondering when we might get out of the room and on to the next patient. But Mr. B and I were having a moment. The rest of the day would have to wait.
Before I knew it, Mr. B pulled out a photo album full of pictures of unique blankets he had made over the years. As he flipped the pages, he narrated the story of each blanket as he remembered it. I will get the details wrong here, but he strung the most amazing web of connections with the telling of the whereabouts of his blankets. It went something like this (again, the details will be wrong, but you will get the idea):
This one is now in Newfoundland and belongs to the cousin of the father of a someone who lives in Saskatchewan. This one was made for my family member who then gave it as a gift to a friend in who lives about an hour outside of Toronto. The last time I heard about this blanket I was told it now resides in Ireland. This one is up in the Yukon somewhere. I think someone gave this to a friend who had a baby in Iceland. I think this one might be in Tennessee. And so on, and so on.
Mr. B’s blankets were couch throws, wall decorations, and bedspreads. They were pieces of art and cozy cuddle-ups for Saturday movie nights for two. They were gifts bought for others and shipped across provinces, countries, borders, and oceans. Mr. B’s blankets were world travelers and heart-filler-uppers.
I sat there and marveled at the far-reaching impression the man across from me and his hobby had on strangers. His talent translated into love shown from him to another person, and then to another. For each blanket made, he knew not where it might end up or who it might touch. He knew not if it would keep someone warm at night or hang for strangers to admire. His remarkable truth is that strangers know him because of the care he takes with his crochet needles. His impact is so beautiful to me.
I shared with Mr. B that his blankets reminded me vividly of a book I had received from one of my mentors in Denver, where I spent two years doing a fellowship in gastrointestinal oncology and new drug development from 2006-2008. My mentor knew the author and had a copy signed for my then baby boy. “Kiki’s Hats”, authored by Warren Hanson, has since been one of my favorite books. It tells the tale of Kiki, a hatmaker, and how her hats quickly made trips around the world simply due to the kindness of strangers. The lessons to be learned from this book and from Mr. B are multifold and run along the lines that spreading joy is as much a gift to the giver than to the receiver and that one act of kindness can quickly multiply to go further than imagination can take us.
What a world we would live in if everyone shared kindness like Kiki and Mr. B share hats and blankets, respectively. How many strangers might smile and get warm shivers indicating the special feeling of being loved?
Author Notes:
I was recently on vacation with my family. One member of my family brings certain caring and kindness to the world in the form of smiles, eye contact, and engagement . . . with people she does not know!!! She will stop and tell a little girl she looks beautiful in her princess dress. She will ask about the significance of an interesting tattoo she notices on someone’s arm or leg, a question which almost always results in the telling of an interesting life story. She will start up a conversation with the person standing in front of her in line to exchange information that might be helpful to them or us. When chatting with someone wearing a name tag, she will always address them by their name. She also always finds out the name of a server at a restaurant or of her cab or uber driver. She makes personal connections everywhere she goes with strangers. It is amazing to witness.
I think it is safe to say the family we were travelling with love her propensity to talk to strangers as much as I do. On the first day of our trip, we decided to try to keep track of how many strangers she would talk to. It was to be a little game we would play for our week away. Without her knowledge, we started counting. Not quite seven days later we had tallied seventy-nine witnessed interactions with strangers. There were surely more that none of us captured. That is over eleven people per day, or one person almost every two hours, around the clock. She is a spark for connection. In being her authentic, usual, sunshiny self, she was trying to spread joy and love.
As I have reflected on her propensity to talk to strangers, the image of a pebble being dropped from high in the sky into a calm body of water comes up for me. The moment the pebble contacts the water, a ripple outward starts to form. That ripple flows in every direction, a wave of energy reaching outward three hundred and sixty degrees until all its force dissipates.
This is what Mr. B and my family member manage to do, except their doing can be even bigger than that. What if their ripples impact a stranger such that the stranger forms their own ripple? What if that ripple engages another stranger who ripples again? How many ripples can be born? Can the ripples continue at infinitum? I believe the answer is yes.
We do not know the circumstances of the strangers we come across. Some will be happy, some sad. Some might feel peaceful, others agitated. A perceived small act might be the kindness which makes a big difference in a stranger’s life.
I hope we can all be water ripples that re-think stranger danger – just like Mr. B’s blankets do, just like my family member does. 😊
I am curious to know a story from you, reader. How did talking to a stranger positively impacted your world or theirs?
