Shocked by a positive attitude

There's the phenomenon in Sidney I'm going to call 'extreme friendliness,' and I'm still working to get used to it.

As soon as I arrived in town, strangers were smiling, waving and asking me about myself. It made me slightly uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think friendliness is a bad thing at all. I'm just not used to it, not on this extreme level, anyway. People were friendly in my hometown of Vincennes, Indiana, but I've gotten used to Denver where drivers yell expletives we can't print in the paper at pedestrians for the terrible mistake of walking in the cross walk.

I'm sure things like that happen here sometimes as well, but pretty much everyone I've met so far has gone out of their way to be kind to me. On my first day, shooting photos of Bicycle Ride Across Nebraska, cyclists kept ruining my shots by waving at me and giving me the thumbs up. In the range of all the problems one could have, overfriendliness is a good one.

One of the dangers of living in a city is that people feel comfortable being rude to one another because they'll likely never see each other again. People shouldn't be kind to one another just because we'll probably run into each other at the grocery store, we should do it because it makes the world a more pleasant place to live. Whatever the motivation, it'll probably continue to unnecessarily surprise me every time a stranger asks me who I am, where I'm from and shows concern for whether or not I've found a place to live.

Strangers' general attention to my well being astounds me. Everyone keeps offering me food. I'm not telling you to stop, but I want you to know that I'm in no danger of starving.

What a sad state some parts of the world are in that the kindness of strangers should surprise me. There are people everywhere who do nice things for people they don't know, that's not the thing that gets me. What really makes me take pause is the amount of people who've been friendly, kind and just wanted to help me out since I've been here.

Sidney, your hospitality has astonished me, please don't stop anytime soon.