As a moderate introvert I'm not usually a fan of random chit chat conversations with strangers. When I commuted by transit every day in the city I always wore noise cancelling headphones to avoid them. But today at Safeway the guy in line behind me started one. We were both masked, as were maybe 60% of the customers. He asked whether I minded the mask and I responded "not at all. I've gone 2 years without getting covid, am fully vaxxed and boosted, and would just as soon remain a roadrunner." (he didn't know what a roadrunner was so I had to explain.) He also loved the story about the video on twitter six months ago or so where the homeless guy in downtown LA, responding to an antivax protester wondering why, "if covid is so dangerous why aren't all the homeless lying dead in the streets?" said "because I"m vaxxed, you dumb ****!"

In the five minutes that we were chatting the guy just seemed like a real sweetheart. And although it wasn't a surprise that he's fully vaxxed and boosted (something like 98% of the age 5+ population of the county is at least double vaxxed) he didn't look a lot like me demographically. Yeah, he was a middle aged white guy, but the similarity ended there. Whereas I look like I work in a mid-level office job and take my HBP pills reliably every evening before flossing my teeth and get up early on the weekend to do outdoorsy things, this guy looked like he'd spent the 80's in a heavy metal band and had never really abandoned that lifestyle and probably still sees the sunrise more often at the end of the evening rather than from waking up early.