From Jairus Streight"s Blog

Sunday, September 27, 2009
Because you never know who is sitting beside you...
It’s funny how we cross pathes with so many people in any given day, often making eye contact with strangers we know nothing about, and even with an opportunity to say ‘hello’ we proceed to carry on as if they never existed, never once asking them their name, where they are from, or more importantly what’s their story.

The first week of class, I sat down next to this dude named Cody. He seemed like a nice enough guy, so we got chatting,

The conversation that proceeded absolutely floored me.

If you ever think you need a reason to stop and ask a stranger ‘whats your story’, try this on for size….

Our conversation, in a nutshell, went something like this:

Me: “So you swim for UVic?”

Cody: “Ya man. A bit of varsity here and there.

Me: “Cool. What events?”

Cody: “50m free, 100m free, 200m free. Mainly.”

M: “Cool. 100m free eh. How fast you swim that?”

C: “49 sec”

M: “Holy shit…”

C: “Haha ya, how bout you? you swim?”

M: “Haha I try. Not very fast though. I started swimming way too late. I was 15 before I could swim front crawl properly.”

C: “So what man…”

M: “What do you mean?”

C: “So what. I didn’t start swimming until I was 20.”

M: “What? Are you serious?”

C: “Ya man, for real.”

M: “Wtf? How did that happen?”

C: "When I was 16, I was a hockey player. Pretty good too. I was recruited for the like a Canada West All-Star team. But then during one of my training camps, my body started shutting down on my, causing me all sorts of horrendous problems. I was taken to the hospital, and diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. I spent the next 6 months in the hospital with multiple surgeries, and tubes coming out of me. At that point I weighed something like 109 lbs."

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