It's not that Meredith Bryan didn't have friends—it's that she wasn't, well, friendly. Until she tore down the fortress she'd built around herself, and the world smiled back.
By Meredith Bryan
My mother was robbed at gunpoint in our home when she was pregnant with my sister. As a toddler, I found the event less scarring than she did (her water broke from the stress). Still, she spent the rest of my childhood instilling in me a fear of strangers and an appreciation of big dogs and high-tech alarm systems.
Three decades later, I've taken her lessons to heart. I live in New York City, a place teeming with strangers. And I never speak to them. Not to the old man playing his cello on the subway platform, or the NYU students scouring the sale rack alongside me at the Gap—hell, not even to the tired moms pushing baby strollers on my block, who seem particularly disinclined to commit violence. With friends, I'm solicitous (after an initial thaw, at least). Toward anyone I don't know, I'm dismissive at best, rude at worst. Why are they taking so long to order their coffee?
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