The funny thing about NYC

So i ran into my friend today, who with a gigantic smile on his face said he needed to tell me about his latest card giveaway. He was on the train and across from him was this girl that just had this incredible smile, he said it literally melted him in place. So he decided that he needed to give her a card. But she was with a friend, and the train was crowded and he didnt know how to go about and do this, and said he felt very reminiscent of what i felt in my last failure. He couldn't gather up the nerve and it didnt happen.

Well here is the funny thing about NY. In a city of millions, it is still surprising how you still manage to run into people you don't think you will run into.

He had left the train, feeling like shit, and gone to school. As he was walking down 13th st, he all of a sudden sees that the same girl is walking with her friend down 13th st as well. He was a bit shocked and couldn't quite get his head together at the moment. He notices that her friend and her go into this tiny little sandwich shop right by our school and they go upstairs to eat.


He stands there blankly staring at the sandwich shop and the strange way the wind blows in NYC. He walks up to the lady that is behind the register and asks her "Did you see the girl that was in the striped shirt that went upstairs just now?" The lady says yes, with a perplexed look on her face. And my friend hands the lady behind the register the card and asks her if she could please hand that to her when she comes down to pay.

The lady looks at the card, turning it over back and forth and also with a gigantic smile looks up and says "Yeah, i can definitely do that"

Hopefully, the girl will receive the card with utter shock, not knowing who it was that gave it to her and will smile again.

Looks like many people smiled from this today.

But the girl doesn't know

I was talking to my friend today, who happened to have some of the cards i recently made in his wallet and he told me of the latest one that he gave.

Like all good experiences, this one is full of social stigma.

My friend was riding on the train and across from him was sitting a girl. She was just beautiful as he phrased it, but for some reason she was looking sad. He decided that he was going to give her a card and prepped one wondering when to hand it to her.

She gets up and starts to walk out of the train, and he rushes to her and taps her on the shoulder, but unfortunately she didnt feel the tap and just kept going. At the last moment of brilliant thinking, he noticed that her bag was open and he slipped the card in without her even realizing. He said he felt great about it, thinking that she'll find it sometime and not have any idea where it came from. it could be later in the day, tomorrow or even a week from now. (i'm not familiar with how often women clean out their purses)

But the fun part is that he still had to ride the train after and could only imagine what every other passenger who saw this happen was thinking.

Boy taps girl on shoulder, girl doesnt respond, boy slips something into her purse

Sounds shady to me. The rest of his trip must have been real fun :)

its tough but sometimes it just makes you feel good

So, after the last post its been a bit saddening. I really was bothered by my failure. But one of the things that i do want to stress is that this kind of stuff is not easy. I know many of my friends are able to go and chat up just about anyone but that doesnt mean that all people are that capable. I'm very capable of speaking to strangers, i can speak in front of large audiences, i have no stigma or fear of public speaking whatsoever, i could not be a "public performer" if i was afraid. But despite that, its still a struggle to openly convey your feelings to a stranger and in front of other strangers. This is something that i hope begins to change as the barriers between us get smaller, and we move towards a community that is reliant on each other.

Knowing just how challenging this is, there are times when something reassuring does happen. When all of a sudden you feel like you are getting somewhere and you are changing something. These moments, although they do not come quite often, they do happen. I can't even properly describe how great i felt when i received an email saying the following:

"I like your website. I hope I get a card one day; I guess I'll have to start smiling at strangers more."

This made my day, week, month and probably year. Whoever you are, ill make a card with you in mind. Ill make sure to send it out with the wind through some stranger or other, and i hope that at some point it reaches you. Thanks for the email, it really made me smile :)

What is it in our society? or me?

Talk about failure, I feel awful. I failed to give a card to this girl today, although i had decided i was going to do it about half an hour before i did, but i just couldn't. I get on the Q train which was empty and sit down. All of a sudden this girl runs into the train and sits directly across from me, we made eye contact, she looked away and started to smile. It was beautiful, i felt great, whether it was because of me or just because something good happened, but her smile made me feel excellent. I obviously smiled as well. We continue to catch each others eye, each grinning in turn. I decided that i was going to give her a card so i reach into my wallet, pick out the card with the cutest illustration i had and put it into my back pocket for easy access. I couldn't give it to her right then because i have this self imposed rule that i need to give these cards and walk away. This is because i do not want them to be mistaken as a flirtation tool, although i know many of my friends have used them as such. So i just held on hoping that she was not going to get off at the next stop.

The train service was interrupted and we needed to get onto the shuttle bus, it was a mess of people running to the bus, i lost her in the crowd and walked around looking at the buses to see if she was on one of them already. Suddenly she was right in front of me and gave me another great smile as we make eye contact. We get on the bus which was packed and ended up at different parts of the bus. Time passes and i keep glancing over, making sure she was still there. The bus mostly empties and we are standing very close to each other. I reach into my pocket and hold the card, deciding when i will give it.

This is when the disaster began. She picks up her bags and starts walking towards the front of the bus. I panic, thinking "oh no".. i start nervously grasping the card and looking around. All i needed to do was walk up to her as she was leaving the bus but for some reason, all i could think about were the other passengers. I kept thinking that everyone would think i was trying to flirt, i would have to stay on the bus as she left and everyone would just look at me, like a hopeless romantic. I got embarrassed before there was even a need to get embarrassed. I wasn't hitting on her, i just simply wanted to make her smile one more time, and to thank her for making my ride amazing. But i couldn't.

This all makes me wonder, is it something in me or is it something in the culture that i was raised in that has some kind of stigma about just doing a good thing to a stranger? Why did i feel i would be judged, why was i embarrassed, why wasn't i feeling proud about the act i was about to do? What is it about me and NYC that made me freeze and fear doing something nice to her just because of what the rest of the people on the bus would think of me.

Perhaps i'm just weak, and too shy for my own good. But here are the pictures of this card, since i decided to give it to her, it is only for her, and since i failed to give it to her, im going to burn it and apologize.

To the pretty girl, in the white flower jacket with the hearts on your shoes, You really made me smile and i'm sorry that i couldnt properly thank you.

Wow its been a while

Allright, it has been a long long long time since I have posted anything on here. Unfortunately life sometimes gets the better of me. But I now plan about putting this into full throttle again. And to initiate here's the cards I made today as proof that I really am not slacking.       :)   I hope you all are as excited as I am about this .

RR

Rubix cube

Its been a really really long time, since I have had a chance to give out any of these cards. As we all know sometimes life just tends to get a little crazy, and it becomes hard to find time to concentrate only on ourselves, opposed to the obligations that we have to others. That's why I began to think that I had lost the ability to come up to a stranger and hand them a card, I feel that often times this is something that we need to train ourselves to do, it is not easy talking to a complete stranger and especially not handing them a card.
     Getting onto the 2 train tonight at around 2 am, I saw a very pretty girl with headphones waiting for the train. We ended up on the same train going local. She sat down in a seat, gave me a slight glance and then pulled out a rubix cube. Rubix cubes are always fascinating because I can sit with one for about 24 hours and still not solve it. She had solved it in a matter of stops. She sat there with an immense smile of satisfaction on her face as she mixed up the rubix cube one more time. I knew that I would be getting off the train soon and was hoping that before I get off I could see her solve it again. Sure enough 1 stop before I was leaving she solved the cube again. She again smiled with immense satisfactions and it was one of the cutest smiles i'd seen. As I pulled into my station, I walked right up to her, looked her in the eye, smiled and handed her a card. She gave me the greatest smile as she looked at the card. I left the train as she was grinning ear to ear, turning the card over and over again.
It was a good good day :)

Spirit people

So I was working on Halloween. Later that night when I got off I just walked to the bar to have a couple drinks and shoot some pool. There were people in costumes everywhere. Sometime that night I received a really awful phonecall that totally killed my mood. I was feeling really down and wanted to just go home and sleep. But I ended up sticking around for a bit, and saw 3 people come in and set up a table. I would assume that they were hippies, they put up a big sign that said "spirit animal poems"... what they were doing was telling peoples fortunes through poetry and determining their spirit animal. This was all done by listening to a story that the person told. Somehow or other they got me to sit down and tell them a story while they determined my fortune. I don't believe in fortunes and other things but I like the whole atmosphere of the experience, so I complied. Somehow or other I felt a little better afterwards. The poem didn't make any sense at all, one of the most absurd things I've read, kind of like spam mail where random words are juxtaposed, but hey its about the experience. They told me that I restored their faith because apparently the guy before me was really awful, and full of problems. This made me laugh because I knew the guy who came before me, and he does have his issues. I wanted to give them a little something as well because they made me feel better, somehow. So I went over to my backpack and on the spot made them 3 cards, one for each of them. I then walk over and place the cards in front of them, smile and walk back next door to the bar. Later they came over to the bar and gave me a massive hug, a group hug, and one of the girls gave me a kiss on the cheek. They said thank you and gave me gigantic grins... :)