Last night I was supposed to speak about poverty at an event that a servant-hood-based Christian student group had planned and promoted. Chapters of this groups exist at many different schools, and I've had excellent experiences with one or two others, so I was glad to do it. The student I spoke with on the phone said they were planning for 100 people, and that the dress was "business casual." He said he may wear a suit. From his voice and plans to over-dress for the occasion, I thought perhaps he was a go-getter business major and that I was maybe a rung or two below the quality of speaker he was expecting. It especially made me nervous when he asked me if I required payment for coming. I wondered what I had gotten myself into with this very professional young man.
The answer, as it turns out, was a club of people who had been severely sheltered from life by their hard-core home-schooling parents, who now had found one another away at college. These kids struggled to converse with each other and with me, and I could have a conversation with a tree stump if you told me it was lonely. I realized immediately that our conversation had not been formal, just awkward.
When half an hour went by and no one had arrived for the event, I asked how they promoted it. He said, "Oh, we facebooked the international students. Word of mouth, mostly." He pointed across the room at a woman of ambiguous age wearing a black dress, "She put up flyers." I later talked to the girl in the black dress. She said she didn't really like being around people her own age, and missed "all the little kids and grown-ups."
It was sad.
There was one diamond in the rough, though. An Indian student named Bobby, who I talked with for a good 15 minutes. It was great and he was great, so I'm glad I went. But, it did leave me wondering how on earth you help a person who is now an adult learn to compensate for only ever having conversations with parent and aunts and uncles growing up.
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