There is one question I return to more than any other. I first asked it of myself almost four years ago, and I am still as fascinated by it now as I was then. That question is: At what point does a cow become beef? I’ve thought about it a lot, and I still do not know. I could write a series of blog posts about this one question, but unfortunately, that is not why we’re here. I only bring it up because the crux of the question lies in the problem of transitioning identities. When does one thing become another?

Nearly everyone in the English-speaking world probably knows the phrase “stranger danger.” Of course, I understand the need for the general sentiment behind the phrase, and even I cannot deny the pithiness of it, but just because it rhymes does not mean we must all abide by it. For instance, snoozing does not always lead to losing. In fact, being well-rested is known to make you a more capable person, thus making snoozing more of an aid to success than a hindrance. And if you found yourself in a napping competition (we’ve all been there), you snooze, you win. So I guess my point is don’t trust a rhyme to teach you how to live your life.

But the phrase does not hold up under scrutiny. Everyone you know was a stranger at some point. So either we’re all adrenaline junkies, or it really isn’t always that dangerous. The stereotype of London is that people don’t want to talk to you, but I have not found that to be the case.

Here is a selection of stranger interactions in chronological order:

• A man on the plane from Iceland to London. We talked for quite a while. He was from the Caribbean but lived in London for over 30 years. When I told him about studying abroad in London, he kept saying that it was a vibrant city and that I would have a good time. We laughed about the flight tracker saying we were flying south over West Africa.
• A woman in the tube station waiting for the lift. She was wearing an awesome blue velvet cape with silver embroidered stars. After I complimented it, she said she’d just been to the theater to see David Tennant in Macbeth. She got rush tickets for cheap, something I’ll have to make sure to do at some point. We then briefly discussed Hamlet before she told me how some tube stations only have lifts and no escalators because in London you can’t always dig through that much ground because of what has been buried. You can’t dig through graves. This information was prompted, by the way. She didn’t just bring it up out of nowhere.
• A young woman on the bus who I started talking to because we both hit our heads in the same way. I live a bit away from campus, so I take the bus, which I prefer to the tube. The tube is very convenient and easy to use, but I can’t help but feel like I’m the check in the drive-through bank deposit system where you get shoved into a cylinder and rocketed all over the place. On the bus, I can perch on the upper deck and watch the people on the street. The bus is also cheaper. But on the lower deck of the busses near the back, you must go up a step to get to the seat. It is configured in a way that is impossible to maneuver quickly without hitting your head. So we were talking about that. It turned out she also goes to UCL, which we discussed before moving on to diving into the topic of cheap groceries.
• Another UCL student on the bus was talking to me about nepo babies and where to buy ramen.
• A support officer who works at SOAS University. The campus is right by UCL, and this woman started talking to me about the weather since it was the first warmer day. Then we talked about me being from Minnesota, and she was asking me about the winters. She must think about the cold a lot. She wished me all the best, and moments later, her seat on the bench was replaced by…
• A SOAS student. We started by talking about food, and then we got talking about jazz, SOAS, and the UK. He was telling me about cultural amnesia in Birmingham.

None of these interactions led anywhere, nor were they meant to, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t appreciated. The places you go are colored by the people you meet, and you don’t have to learn their names to remember them. And sometimes you do learn their names, and sometimes you even meet them again, until it seems ridiculous to call them a stranger. I would need a lot more time to mention all the people who were strangers earlier this month who I now simply think of as people I know. When did that happen? At the risk of sounding like I’m insulting everyone I’ve ever met, when did the cows become beef?

One of the many characters spotted from my perch in the bus.

The best I can do in terms of perching in the tube.