Friday, August 24, 2018
Staring and Staring
Staring and Staring
My wife remarked, upon first moving to Jamaica, how much we like to stare at people.
She couldnt understand it, and neither could I, because I didnt experience this phenomena at all,and she did. Then she mentioned that it happens especially at stop lights... and we figured it out.
We Jamaicans arent really staring -- we are looking at each other to do a few important things, I tried to explain...
1) We are looking to see if we know you. Or, to put it more precisely, we are trying to remember where we know you from, because we are sure that we know you.
2) If we dont know you, we want to think that we know your mother, brother, father, sister, and we know that you look just like them.
3) By the time we figure out that we dont know you and that you dont remind us of anyone, and that you look fairly average, you have caught us "staring."
I vividly remember taking my first subway trip in New York City and being amazed at how hard people had to work in order to avoid eye contact. In the larger cities, at least, this is everyday behaviour.
Here in the Caribbean, "nutten no go so!" This undoubtedly takes some getting used to.
