More than passing you by

Why would you complain about a good thing bothering you?

I wrote last year about the local bazar (and the pics were better, so really, just go read that again), and was really bummed when they cancelled this year's spring edition because of "noise complaints". While the streets of the local Cotroceni neighborhood can get pretty intense during bazar weekend, it's such a good kind of busy - why would you complain? I guess some people just hate to know you're having a good time.

And it is. Such a good time. Especially in an age where we pass each other by like we don't really exist, and in a country that's not particularly community-prone. Thankfully, they reinstated the fall edition and one sunny Sunday meant I got to go again.

Teaching kids an important value

...selling overpriced crap to strangers. Be that as it may, it's wonderful to be greeted by small children and see them sort of work up the courage to say hello. Well of course, you're so much bigger and more intimidating. Hello, can I help you? Most of them are so damn cute, you're tempted to buy something just to make them happy.

Because I'm trying to budget carefully for future trips, I only ended up getting two lemonades, but the kid who served them was beyond adorable. Couldn't have been more than six or seven years old, yet he was so determined to make it nice for us. Poured the lemonade by hand when the little drip thing wasn't working.

I'm in no place to say what you should be teaching kids, but to me, this sort of thing seems important. Teaching kids that speaking to adults shouldn't necessitate overwhelming amounts of courage. That they're capable of handling things, even "important" things like selling something, all on their own. Because a lot of the kids were left on their own out by the gate, to man the booths. Usually, there was a parent of some sort somewhere within, but it's not uncommon to have kids walk up to you and start chatting. It's an important thing to teach kids -- that they've got something to say and that they can say it.

Can there be trust?

Another aspect of the fair that I love is the openness. We stopped by one table outside a local psychologist's office with related books on sale, as well as some clothes hung up with the prices. No one there, just a note saying to leave money in the mailbox if you take something.

What was to stop me from taking things without paying? Nothing, yet nobody did. Several houses selling stuff had it left freely or precariously on ledges and stoops, unmanned tables, places where it would've been so easy to steal something that was once valuable to somebody.

Yet people left them there anyway, because despite the difficulty of trusting strangers, it has to start somewhere.

Smiling at strangers

If you know me, you know I love to smile at and greet strangers, but that's not very common in Romania, unfortunately. There's a lot of coldness, a lot of distrust. When you smile at people on the street, they turn away like you're trying to sell them something.

Not here. These are moments in the neighborhood's calendar where people smile at one another just because we've chosen to exist in the same place at the same time for a brief period. It's special.

And it is, of course, signaling a disappearing sense of community that's at the core (I believe) of the many ills of these modern times. People needed community, it was why organized religion was and still is in some places so central, it bound a community together.

Now that's disappearing in many places and while I don't think a return to the church is the answer in the slightest, I'm not convinced by our attempts at forming new communities, either. We so often group around malevolent actions, find belonging in groups that are extremist or cruel or exclusionary. Not that that wasn't a thing in religion, too. Of course.

Anyway. Sometimes it's nice to come together as a community without disparaging so-and-so political party, neighboring clan, or anyone who looks, feels or thinks mildly different than you. To be bound together by the sharing of a common good/value, not by the hatred of an outgroup. So important.

How was your weekend?