Smith: Two travelers converge at Safeway

En route to a birthday party days ago, Jan King of Sebastopol popped into the town’s Safeway store for salad mix and helium balloons.

In the produce department, the world traveler - 100-plus countries - and retired organizer of international home-stay visits felt the intense gaze of a stranger looking to be in his 30s.

“He is staring at me and staring at me,” Jan recounts. At last, the fellow approached.

Introducing himself as Robert, he told her he didn’t remember her name but he very much remembered her.

About 20 years ago, when he was 16, he said, she’d come to his house in Sebastopol to prepare his family for the imminent arrival of a Japanese boy who would be living with them for a time.

Robert said he was struck profoundly by what Jan and his parents talked about after the business at hand was finished: They spoke of venturing out and experiencing the wonders of the world.

Robert reminded Jan that she’d shared some of her many adventures, encounters and discoveries in fantastic places. Then he told her:?“You changed my life. You set the direction of my life.”

Bursting with gratitude and the surprise opportunity to express it, Robert told Jan, right there amid the lettuces, that from that moment long ago he knew he would be a world traveler. He found a line of work that he can conduct from anywhere, he stashes money and when there’s enough for another journey he takes off.

“You so inspired me that it became my life’s passion,” he said.

He mentioned that he’d once sojourned just outside of North Korea, and that he’d learned to speak Japanese. He has been to 64 countries and at present is visiting his mother in advance of his next departure.

Jan had no idea she’d impacted a life that way. She told Robert she was thrilled for him and his travels, and she apologized for having to grab the balloons and get to the party.

It dawned on her later: As much as she’d savored meeting him again and swapping travel stories, she’d failed amid the rush at Safeway to trade phone numbers or even have him remind her of his last name.

You still around, Robert, or have you departed to foreign land No. 65?

MARCH ON ‘SELMA’: Learning hits the streets next Tuesday. Most or all of the junior class at Santa Rosa High will march from the campus to downtown’s Roxy Theater to see the film “Selma.”

When the 400 or so students leave campus at 8:30 a.m., they’ll carry reproductions of protest signs that activists made for the 1965 voting-rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.

Joining the students will be a number of SRHS teachers and administrators, and also retired administrators Sue Sion and Harriett Gray. Both grew up in the South and knew institutional prejudice and segregation.

The Santa Rosa High School Foundation will cover the cost of the tickets, deeply discounted by the theater’s owner, Santa Rosa Entertainment Group. Once the two-hour film concludes, the contingent of Panthers will return to the Santa Rosa Avenue/Mendocino Avenue sidewalk, presumably with much to talk about on the march back to school.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.