Matt and I meet the most interesting people when we are out and about together. For some reason we seem to draw or be drawn into conversations with total strangers (most often people running the cash register), and when we finish the conversation or transaction we are left with a feeling that our lives have been touched by an interesting person.

It happened again to me today. This time I was out by myself and had to go to Fedex to mail some documents. First of all - every exchange I had with a Fedex employee was lovely - and then I met Hai. Hai was in charge of international packaging and while he was completing the mailing form he said, "Jefferson? I went to T.C. Williams." He is totally young looking, so I responded, asking him if he went to school in the new building.

"No," he replied, "I graduated from high school in 1979 and then went to Catholic University. I took a lot of A.P. classes, though."

"Hmm, yeah, that's good," I mumbled, thinking about getting back to school for the staff meeting.

"I was helicoptered out of Saigon in 1975," he continued. Whoa, this caught my attention and I looked at him again. My dad had been in Vietnam in the late 60's and early 70's and I had always held a somewhat glamorized image of his life there.

"You lived in Vietnam during the war?" I asked. "T.C. Williams High School must have been very different when you got here."

"It wasn't that bad," he said. "I was learning English and French in high school. High school is much easier here." I didn't doubt that he found the educational system here somewhat lacking. "I think it is better here, though," he said, his eyes moving between the package he was labelling and my face. "Teachers here are more supportive of their students. In Vietnam, schooling was very competitive. In many Asian countries, students commit suicide because their grades aren't good enough and they have dishonored their family name."

All of the sudden I was feeling a little over my head. "In fact," he stopped scanning the package and looked off into the air above my head, "most of the Kamikaze pilots in the war with Japan had failed their families and chose to become those pilots so they could win their family's honor back by committing suicide. You know Vietnam was taken over by the Japanese before the war?"

I nodded in understanding, thinking of the book which my seventh graders and I had read called "So Far From the Bamboo Grove," written by a lovely Japanese woman whose family had been stationed in Vietnam.

"Did you know that the Vietnamese people are really Chinese? My name, Hai, is a Chinese name, like Shanghai. Hai means water; Shanghai means tall waters." He paused for a second, "OK. You are all done. Your packages will arrive on March 22nd."

And, all of a sudden, we were finished, and he was moving on to another customer. "Goodbye, Hai," I said, sad that the opportunity to interact with and learn about this interesting person was over, but glad to have had the interaction, just the same. I walked out of the store considering how lucky I am to have these opportunities to meet people and consider other perspectives.