Strange, this human reserve

Never talk to strangers," warned grandma, when I was still a pocket-sized rocket of energy. "If a stranger asks your name tell him 'Go ask my grandma'." "Why shouldn't I tell people I'm Kevin?" I used to ask, resentful even at that early age of enforced anonymity. You got a name, flaunt it. "Because..." was all grandma would say by way of reply, leaving the rest of her sentence cloaked in mystery. "Some of them kidnap," volunteered an uncle one time, but I now think he was using armchair psychology to get me to eat a dish I didn't particularly relish.

Probably okra (nee gumbo, or bendi). Same gooey mass that still revolts me enough to wish I could encounter a stranger and shout, "Hey, I'm Kevin, and I need help here!" Uncle's armchair definitely needed fresh upholstery but as a child one swallowed the bluffology as determinedly as one did the gumbo. At about the same time an aunt, who would have been in her early twenties, completely put me off the song Jambalaya, singing incessantly, her own interpretation of the lyrics, Jambalaya goldfish pie feeling gumbo.... Fish pie, gumbo, Jambalaya and strangers have, since then, forever been connected with invisible dots in my mind. Gran has passed on, so has uncle. Aunt is a lot older and has moved on to other songs, thank goodness. I'd hate to contemplate the legacy she would be bestowing on her own grandchildren who may be of a similarly sensitive digestive disposition as myself. But on the stranger issue, it struck me with force recently that if from day one we ignore everybody (except the near, and dear, family) we are dooming ourselves to be strangers to others too. The first people a child meets outside the family are usually his peers in the kindergarten.

Countless friends

All strangers, nearly all wanting to say "Hi" and talk and laugh and tease and box ... and cry. I must have, unwittingly, broken grandma's "Don't Talk To Strangers" rule, because I had countless friends at school, all the way through. In fact grandma's the one ended up baking endlessly for all the friends that I brought home. She approved of them all as well as far as I could tell. But later, as the rational powers develop one realises that classmates don't get classified as strangers. Grandma really meant the man in the street, or the man in the car with the dark tinted windows who might invite, "Hop in, I'll drop you off to school." However, now that I have passed the age of being kidnapped and possibly molested, I have decided to make as many friends as I possibly could, making up for the years when "The Rule" flashed red in my mind and anybody who offered the merest smile was rebuffed with a thunderous frown (I have the lines to prove it, too).

In this way I have got to meet and become friends with Barney the bicycle enthusiast, Ryan the effervescent schoolteacher, Eddie the painter, Dominic the paramedic and a host of others. All it's taken is a simple, "Hi, how are you going, matey?" So this, "getting to know" more people, prevent them from being strangers, has been catching on. It's something extra to consider when setting out from home. Right, who am I going to say hello to today? Or, how many? The line at the post office is a good place; everybody's there for the same reason, usually: paying a bill. Bills have a way of dropping everybody's defences against a cheerful, "Hi". Well, nearly everybody's. The guy in front of me, probably half my age, scowled ominously when I greeted him, recently. When I attempted small talk, he looked at me through glazed eyes. Probably heard the voice of his grandma, too, or was about to pay a staggering bill. My question: At what point do you become the stranger? Returned that day feeling decidedly gumbo.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney.