Human Armadillos

I have developed a theory that the population size of a city can be ascertained by the length of time that two strangers hold each other’s gaze when encountering each other on the street. In New York City, population eight million, it is nearly impossible to capture the gaze of a stranger, even for a second. I tested this when I was younger and ostensibly more attractive, by assuming a pleasant countenance and then looking people in the face as I walked down big city streets. Young guys would react with a slight smile, but then in an instant would look away, look away, look away. In Topeka, Kansas, population 125 thousand, two strangers meeting will regard each other long enough to register whether they know the other person, then dart their eyes after about five seconds. In Oskaloosa, Kansas, population one thousand, two strangers will stare at each other until one of them starts a conversation.

The nucleus of this idea started forming when I went away to college. Although the college was surrounded by cornfields in a small town in Iowa, it attracted large numbers of students from big cities, especially the large metropolises on the Eastern Seaboard. Besides the Bronx and Brooklyn accents, there was an even deeper divide between these metropolitan students and the denizens of the Midwest. They didn’t seem interested in getting to know anybody they didn’t know already. Constantly in a hurry, they may as well have been tunneling through campus in armored cars, totally oblivious to anyone or anything surrounding them. In contrast, kids from small hamlets and medium-sized towns in…