My son Diego and I were getting off the chairlift at a ski resort outside Salt Lake City when I felt a pull on my jacket, followed by a snap. A moment later, I heard a voice behind me.
“Your gloves,” it said.
It was the lift operator, a thin young man with a dark complexion and wavy brown hair. He was holding my gloves, which I’d clipped to my jacket. The temperature was 60-plus degrees —31 degrees higher than average, according to my weather app— too hot for gloves.
Diego, who’s 32 and “on the spectrum,” as they say, couldn’t help himself.
“Are you from here?” he had to ask.
“I live here now,” said the lift operator.
“Where you from?” Diego rephrased, insisting on knowing where the guy was originally from.
“I’m from Houston,” he clarified, and then added, with a proud smile, “I’m actually Native American. Navajo.”
Diego happily continued the conversation by sharing that he was from Connecticut and 32 years old, while I, his mom, was from Venezuela.
For whatever reason, when Diego is on vacation, he feels compelled to find out where every person who crosses his path is from. For many years, his routine overture would be, “Hi, I’m Diego. I’m from Connecticut. Where are you from?”
On our recent five-day trip to Utah, he decided to switch it up a little for some reason, opting for “Are you from here?” as his opening line.
I must’ve heard him ask the question five or so times each day. Pretty soon, I could predict how the exchange would go.
If the person hailed from another land, he’d tell them he had a book on wherever they were from, that he wanted to go there, and a fact about their home state or country.
If the person was from Utah, he’d follow up with one of the following four statements: “I’m from Greenwich,” “I’m from the United States,” “I’m from Connecticut,” and, once in a while, “I’m from New York,” which was a bit of a stretch, even if the next town west of us is in New York State.
My hypothesis: he was experimenting to see which place of origin elicited the most interest. After all, his delight was clear when the stranger, instead of ending the conversation, would follow up with a comment such as, “My sister lives in Connecticut,” or “I was in New York last year.” Diego would smile and blink in an expression that said, “By God, can you believe this incredible coincidence?”
Aside from Salt Lake City and Utah in general, we met people from China, Canada, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, Colorado, California, New York, and Arizona.
Diego stayed at the Airbnb with my sister on our third ski day, so, sadly, he missed out on meeting the skier from Poland —a man I shared a chairlift with and who asked me the weirdest question: “What’s your favorite country?”
Sounds like something Diego might ask, I thought at first. But then I realized Diego doesn’t get the concept of favorite. Every superhero, every feline, every aunt, every Disney movie (except for Fantasia, which terrifies him), and every country is his favorite.