Wolves do not have highly evolved etiquette

I don't know how you were raised, but my mother told me I should never talk to strangers. This does not, however, seem to keep strangers from talking to me.

I was stopped last Saturday in Ikea by a middle-aged man wanting to know if I found his arrangement of candles attractive. "What do you think of this?" he asked. I looked around to make sure he wasn't talking to someone standing behind me, perhaps his wife or mother or SOMEONE AT LEAST TANGENTIALLY RELATED TO HIM. He was not. I said, "Uh, it looks nice."

"You think? Like on a table for dinner?"
"Yeah, that would be nice."
"Do you know where I can find more of these candles?"

Now, I was very distinctly not wearing a navy blue polo with "IKEA" stitched on the breast in yellow. I was looking at wrapping paper (I know, who knew they sold wrapping paper at IKEA?) and carrying a strainer and a mirror. There was no earthly reason this guy should have been chatting it up with me about candle placement.

This isn't an isolated incident, either. In Austria I was frequently trapped by old people who wanted a young ear to listen to their life story. One man, on finding out that I was working as a teacher, told me how out-of-control teenagers were. I agreed, but I was laughing on the inside because as he was telling me this, his grandson was throwing pinecones at squirrels and flinging sand at fellow three-year-olds with a minature shovel.

An old woman at the Südbahnhof in Vienna talked to me for twenty minutes about how expensive bakeries were. I was with my family, and she felt free to comment that my dad looked younger than my mom, and that it was unreasonable of them not to speak German.

Planes, trains, and supermarket aisles—people feel free to accost me anywhere. They ask for directions, donations, and advice; they tell me ridiculously intimate details. It's not limited to adults, either: Sarah, who was sitting next to me on my last airplane flight, informed that she was almost three, having her birthday in October, and, after she asked me what I was doing (to which I responded, semi-sarcastically, "Reading and listening to music,"), she told me that she was sleeping. Sarah's not unique in her inquisitiveness. This was a frequent conversation with strangers in Austria:

"Wie alt sind sie?" (How old are you?)
"23."
"Sind sie geheiratet?" (Are you married?)
"Nein."
"Wieso nicht?" (Why not?)
"Tja...eigentlich, ich habe keine Ahnung."

I don't know why people feel that they can talk to me when I'm just trying to find the damn lemon juice and go home, for crying out loud. I never ask random strangers if they like my candle arrangement or why they're not married. I mean, who does that?

Everybody, evidently.