Stranger Q+A

Why do you cross the street?

To get a glimpse of you.

It was too long ago and I’m to old for this. Wish I could go back and fix things. Or at least see you and see that you are okay. But you haven’t been here in years and I need to get home to my new life.

Hi Jewel –

We met at the closing party, which is basically a blur in my mind after 9pm. No idea what we discussed, but I loved the photo! My question was “What do you hide?” Personal!

I tend to bond over two things: insecurity and / or my fairly specific interests. Depending on the context I’m usually hiding one or the other. If I like spending time with someone but don’t share common interests, I’ll try to hide my Aspergian obsession with that small set of topics to avoid alienation. At XOXO, that wasn’t a problem, and instead I found myself hiding my everyday insecurities (emotional hang-ups, fear of failure / success, an aversion to strenuous physical activity caused by a childhood history of broken bones, etc.).

Also, I haven’t been self-motivated to create anything in three years. Very embarrassing. Let me close the browser and work on fixing that…

Hi Jewel, we met at the XOXO opening party. I believe we discussed civic engagement, amongst several topics.

Your question: how far have you travelled?

My answer: Not yet far enough. I think I’m maybe half-way there, and I think I will learn much more the rest of the way.

Hiya! What a delight to meet you and participate in your photo fun. I’m Virginia, an online dating coach up in Seattle, and my question was “Do you have a repeating dream?”

I don’t have those anymore, but when I was a little kid I had a series of different repeating dreams. They were all pretty scary. One involved swimming in a pitch-dark lake filled with tiny islands completely covered in autumn leaves, as if they’d been decoupaged. The islands somehow had palm trees, also decoupaged in autumn leaves. And scary dinosaurs often hid behind those palm trees, defying the laws of physics and biology and climate and time and all sorts of things. Oh, and I was always wearing my purple footed pajama romper thing. This is one of my earliest memories, from perhaps four years old. That dream HAUNTED me, yet I still begged to go see the dinosaur exhibit at Pacific Science Center as often as possible. I guess I was a bold kid, after a fashion?

I also had recurring dreams about my furry bean bag chair coming to life and terrorizing me, about this one weird-looking crack in a window turning into a demon portal eye that would allow monsters to come into my house and terrorize me, and my adorable cat walking on hind legs and becoming somewhat zombified and terrorizing me. It’s funny; I don’t think of myself as a particularly fearful person, and I don’t think I was all that scared as a kid either. But man, those dreams still make me cringe.

The most haunting recurring dream was a little older, maybe seven or so. My childhood house was filled with adults who were at a party, milling about so thick and tall that I and a couple other kids had to weave our way around their legs, and kind force openings between boring grown-up people. All of these different party-rooms were somehow connected with yellow metal tube slides, like at the playground, and you’d just slide from one busy boring adult-filled party room into another. An endless series of pointless yellow slides. It’s possible I needed a little more adult attention at that stage in my life, haha.

I haven’t had recurring dreams in oh so long now. They always had this haunting creepy yet fascinating quality, even the scary ones, so a little part of me looked forward to them because they at least felt familiar. My familiarity comes from other sources now, I think. But I’ll let you know if I ever have a recurring dream again. 🙂