Hi, I Don't Know You, But Can You Give Me Some Directions, Please?

Those who know me long enough, sooner or later get exposed to a strange thing that tends to happen to me on a regular basis. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but it seems like I have this subtle ability to attract people asking me for directions. I don’t do anything for that, they just come and ask me.

It happens vey often on the streets, where it’s quite common to be stopped and asked for directions, by people I've never seen in my entire life.

It happened, for instance, in an elevator, in a building I’ve never been before, where some lady asked me about a certain company being at a certain floor. It happened constantly in the subway, in the plane, even when I traveled abroad. People stopped me on the streets of, I don’t know, Geneva or Paris or Auckland or even Vegas, to ask me if I don’t know where a certain street is. And I was just a tourist there.

I stopped long ago to ask myself why this is happening, until today, when this whole story reached the next level.

What happened?

Well, Wednesdays are my “circle days”. I won’t go into details about what a "circle day" is, because I’m preparing another, more complete post about it, suffice to say that during "circle days" I work from a coffee shop. One of my regulars is a coffee shop called “Arome”, very small, but with tremendously good food and very friendly staff.

As I was staying there this morning, a woman entered the coffee shop, cruised directly to me, watching me straight in the eyes. The fact that I was the only customer in the coffee shop kinda helped her to cruise directly to me, but still.

After we made eye contact, the woman smiled and asked me gently:

-- Do you have internet in this place?
-- Of course, I answered, thinking she was going to ask me about the WiFi password.

She smiled again:

-- Can you tell me where the Direction for the child protection is? she uttered like on my hat I had written all over, in italics: “I can tell anyone entering this space where the Direction for the child protection is”. And since I was staring to her like an UFO just landed on my desk, unloading a small alien asking me for a cappuccino, she continued: I just need the address to put in my GPS and from there I’ll be ok.

Without a word, I looked up the address on Google Maps and gave it to her, happy to be helpful.

She turned around with another smile and then left the coffee shop, while I was staying there, alone, looking at her blending in the busy, rainy wall of silhouettes passing by on the sidewalk.

And then I wrote this, while scratching my beard and asking what really happens in my life.

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.