By Regena Handy
I’ve taken up a new hobby. Nothing particularly glamorous or exciting about it. Not even physically exerting or at all artistic. Actually it’s a fairly common diversion, anyone can do it. And many do to a certain extent.
This is the way I heard it described once, comparing it to another form of entertainment. It is ‘like bird watching except with people’. People watching. My latest pastime.
In my former, pre-retired life, all of life was planned. If grocery shopping was on the schedule, that was what I did. At the store I was on a mission — get in and get out. No lingering or ‘lollygagging around’, as my mother would have said.
But these days when errands need to be done, my husband and I often make the trip together, taking care of several tasks. Such excursions sometimes allow that I am the one who waits in the vehicle while he takes care of business. It used to be that I carried a book with me at all times, using any spare minutes to catch up on my reading. But now I instead use such occasions to observe those fascinating creatures around me called humans.
For a couple of years, I spent several hours each week with an elderly relative. She lived alone so her favorite thing to do was to get a milkshake and park in the Walmart lot, watching shoppers come and go. An ideal public location for seeing a variety of people.
To me this idle practice of observing others is totally innocent. While some might consider such action to be done out of nosiness or even an invasion of privacy, I never do so with the slightest bit of maliciousness or as an act of judging. It is nothing more than a straightforward interest in the rest of the world and its inhabitants.
In fact for a writer, observing others stimulates the imagination. We have all certainly heard the phrases that ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ and ‘everyone has a story.’ Same goes for the invented people that populate stories. Seldom could a writer dream up one that outshines the true characters we all meet on a daily basis. Factual situations and real people often plant little seeds in a writer’s brain that grow into a story all its own, perhaps inspired by but, in the end, no way related to a true event.
When they were younger my kids would call me on it when they saw me unconsciously looking at strangers. “Mom, don’t stare,” they’d say. What they didn’t realize was that the constant story writer that lives in me was busy at work, noting others’ idiosyncrasies, arranging my version of their particular story in my mind.
It’s especially entertaining to observe others who are doing the same — in other words, watch people who are people watching. You ever wonder if there is someone watching you watch someone else watch yet another person. Sort of like a hallway of mirrors, reflecting on and on, endless. Whew! A brain teaser I’ll leave with you to mull on.
