I'm a people watcher...and a 'wonderer'

Have you ever just sat somewhere and watched people walk by?  Maybe an airport or a coffee shop?  Or maybe you've spent some time sitting quietly and inspecting the patrons around you at a bar?  

Well, if you haven't, I sure have.  It's my stock in trade, you could say....kind of what makes me tick and gives me perspective on my own life; tempering both the elation of my triumphs misery of the negative experiences beset me.  What I think I see in others has become sort of like my 'thermostat' for life and a bit of a reality-check if I feel a bit ungrounded.  

Anyway, I look at people and think about what their life is like: Are they happy, or sad, or secretly elated?  Are they a good person or a vindictive and bitter soul?  Do they have someone they love in their life?  If they are old, do they have a spouse and children and close friends or are they alone in the world, and equally, if they are young do they have living parents or siblings or hopes for a family in the future?  What did they eat for lunch and what will they have for dinner, what shampoo do they use and, as a child, what did they want to be when they grew up?  Where are they coming from today and where are they going this evening?

I know this seems like a comprehensive list of 'what ifs' but I have to admit, it is perhaps only 5 seconds worth of my random thoughts about any one person I might steal a glance at.  It may even make me sound like a stalker, but that's just not my style; I'm simply interested in how my life compares to the lives of the people I randomly come into contact with daily.  Doesn't everybody?

For the sake of examples, here are a couple of memorable things I've seen recently that that made me wonder a bit:

I was outside a coffee shop sitting on a bench when a gaggle of hipsters wandered out with their perfectly aged shoes, vintage t-shirts and hats, skinny jeans and suspenders, etc.  Nothing striking in that, cause hey, I life in Prague.  Nope.  The think that made me giggle and wonder about where these kids heads were at is that they were endlessly complaining about how 'mainstream' hipster-ism is and how they are "soooo totally glad that they weren't hipsters."  Which made me wonder what their own self-perceptions were and how they could fool themselves in their herd mentality...and then on to what their bedroom walls look like or if they have closets full of other clothes from different genres or what their taste in movies or television was or if they had motorcycle licenses and what they were studying at school?  Whatever, you get the point.

And then, there was something that totally captivated me on the subway in Berlin a couple of weeks ago. As I sat with a couple of my German friends, I casually took note of a boy and girl opposite us.  They were sitting relatively close to each other, clearly some sort of a relationship, smiling and taking intimately and then the boy put his hand out to reach for the girls hand.  And she looked at him then completely ignored him.  It was fascinating.  She pulled her hand away and turned just slightly to completely focus on her mobile phone and whoever she was texting - but he just left his hand lying there limp, occasionally adjusting it to remind her it was there as if he would wait forever for her to take hold of it....but she didn't.  Eventually (after several minutes), he noticed an entire row of people on our side of the car looking at him and pulled his hand away and turned away from her slightly.  All I could think the entire time was "how ineffectual must this guy be to wait some interminable time for acceptance from someone who is disinterested" and equally, why was social pressure, in the form of others watching, the ultimate trigger for him to grow a backbone and pull his limp hand away from her leg?  I was wondering if this kid had any actual friends or if he was equally as weak with everyone in his life?  Did he have parents or a sister and what did they think of him?  Was he a hidden genius who would invent cold fusion or the master some theory of quantum mechanics but was simply socially awkward?  

Soooo....you get the point - I look at random people and wonder.  I guess it's where most of my story ideas come from.  A combination of experiences from those I've met in life and intrigue regarding those whom I'll never get to know personally.  What do you wonder?