The man in the orange shirt

People buzzed past me on either side, speaking in languages that I couldn’t understand or identify. I was in a train station in Denmark. It was a beautiful day, sun cast down and warmed the city. I walked through a park next to the train station, wrote in my journal and ate a granola bar from my diminishing stash. My train was scheduled to depart in an hour and I sat on a bench alone watching the families stroll past me.

While my mind wandered and I suppressed the ever-lurking stress in the back of my mind, I tried to plan where I could sleep for the next few days. I was alone in Europe, with nothing more than a ten pound backpack and a tracking phone with only a few minutes left on it. A man was suddenly sitting next to me on the bench, interrupting my thoughts and peering into my face.

“Hello,” he spoke to me in a thick accent. He had dark skin and dark hair, he looked to be maybe Indian. He wore an orange shirt I remember. I couldn’t identify his accent. Before I knew it, he was talking and talking, his eyes searched the crowd around me. He started asking me questions about our government, about where I was from. He pried and pushed, even yelled with excitement as he spoke about President Bush and his disagreement with our government. I hardly listened to him, I was so distracted by his sudden approach. Paranoia took hold, I remember how people had warned me of getting robbed and how careful I should be traveling alone. My money and passport were secure under my shirt. I pulled my backpack closer, wrapped my legs around it and held the strap with both hands. He spoke on. I wondered if he was distracting me and he had friends that were watching in the crowd and waiting to pounce upon me. Beads of nervous sweat formed on my forehead. Finally, when I began to wonder if he would ever leave me alone, a tall white man sat next to me and opened a newspaper. The man in the orange shirt glanced at him. “Oh is this your father?” he asked. Startled, I realized it was my out. I nodded and scooted a few inches closer to the man holding the newspaper.

After Orange Shirt had left, with a nonchalant wave, I breathed a sigh of relief and realized all my muscles were tense. Had the man been a threat? Was he just genuinely nice? Was my fear an overreaction? It made me wonder. Had society trained us to be wary and afraid of strangers, suspicious of even the honestly nice passerby? I look back and think that my interaction with Orange Shirt could have ended in a much worse manner, I was a hundred and ten pound, eighteen year old girl traveling through Europe alone after all. But it didn’t and I still wonder if he was just being nice to me or if he had ulterior motives.