This past weekend I visited Duke Gardens with a friend. We got to stroll around the grounds admiring the flowers and plants, the Gothic architecture and the Duke University campus. It was more crowded than I had anticipated. I’d estimate there were a thousand visitors – including many multigenerational families, middle aged alumni accompanied by their college aged kids, babies in strollers, and screaming toddlers running rampant.
I am a people watcher. Watching families is some of the best people watching there is. Some of my favorite places to observe families is at the beach, state fairs and amusement parks. Body types, relationships and behaviors seem starkly obvious to me when the family is out socializing.
I make up all kinds of stories in my head about the families. Maybe the grandparents live with the parents. Maybe the family always visits the gardens after church before going to Sunday brunch. Perhaps the alumni are uber wealthy scions who flew in to see their kid at school before heading back home to Nantucket for a day on the yacht.
Based on my actual experience of getting to know people, the stories I tell myself are usually way off. I find out the “rich kid” is just a working class guy on a scholarship. The “happy family” only sees each other every few years. That screaming baby has a single mom and the guy who I assumed was her “husband” is her brother.
But I’m fine with being totally wrong about them. I’ll never see them again and my stories add to my enjoyment of people watching.
PS. I know I am not alone in this. My wife and I used to love people watching together at the beach, the zoo and Kennywood park. However, half the time, she’d end up talking to the people we were watching because she just had that kind of “come talk to me face” that people found irresistible. I, on the other hand, have never suffered from that problem.