I’d never been someone who got asked for directions. Hardly anyone ever smiled at me as they passed me on a street. If I sat on a bus or a train, the seats next to mine would stay empty unless the bus or train filled up. Even then, some people seemed to prefer to stand. There was something on my face that said “not friendly” or “stranger danger.” I didn’t know what it was, but I could guess. I possessed a full head of crazy curly hair and my father’s intensity. Strangers stayed away from my father, too. They were scared he might slug them back in the day. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

I was used to this treatment by strangers. It didn’t bother me that much, although I did like all the oohs, ahs and friendly treatment I received whenever I had a pet, usually a cat, with me on a plane or at an airport. Pets apparently made me look approachable and turned me into just another human being. I often joked that if I were single, I’d get a dog, that it was the only way a woman might think I was relationship material.

But then I turned 60. My hair started thinning and then about half of it disappeared. My face wrinkled up. The intensity that defined me softened a bit. Somehow all of that aging caused a profound change in how strangers viewed me. Suddenly, people chose me as the first person to sit next to on a bus or train. They’d smile almost reflexively if they’d pass me on the street. Strangers asked me for directions in places everywhere, even in foreign countries. It was like I was a different person. Betore I evoked a stranger-danger response. Overnight people thought I was as cute as a 12 week old puppy. Does this look like a 12 week old puppy to you?

I’m happy that total strangers love me nowadays, but I don’t get why. I have a theory, though. It’s based on the fact that the friendliest of strangers are twenty to thirty year old women. They open doors for me. In Poland when I visited, they came out of nowhere to help carry my luggage and would laugh when I said I was fit enough to carry it myself. I’m grandpa material nowadays. I look as harmless and in need of attention as a 12 year old beagle. When I hiked in England this year, normally taciturn and stiff upper lip people somehow transformed into oversharing Californians in my presence. In Newcastle when this happened, I’d just nod and smile and pretend to understand their Jordy accent, which is impenetrable. In Belgium, it was the same, but I could understand them just fine.

Every time I take a walk in San Francisco and Palo Alto nowadays, people smile at me as they pass by. Next year, though, I’m going to put my newly found likability up to the most difficult and rigorous tests imaginable. I’ll be in New York City in January and Israel in September. These two places are chock full of the hardest of the hard edged people on this planet. I do note that as a kid I’d visit Jewish New York Queens, walk into stores, speak Yiddish and get all kinds of smiles (and sometimes free candy). But that was a long time ago and those store owners are long gone. It’ll be a different story now. Wish me luck!