Talking to strangers.

On the subway back from my internship, I got to chatting with the woman sitting next to me - first about her daughter's hair, which was terrifically long, then about herself. After a couple of stops she told me she wasn't feeling so good, and that she was thirsty and tired and kind of hungover. So I did the only thing I could think of: I offered her a Diet Coke. She said she didn't want one, but then I pulled one out of my bag, showed it to her, and she said she had to take it.

For context, I'd bought a pair of 8.5 ounce aluminum bottles in an upscale grocery store near my internship's location as a piece of self-indulgence after a low week. It was the bottle's shape that won her over, and after she had some, she said it was helping, had some more, and thanked me for the drink.

In part, it was a pair of individuals reclaiming mass-produced consumer-based media products and reappropriate them into a shared incident with genuine purpose and meaning, revitalizing the symbols in question. And in part, it was helping someone in a bad moment get into a better one.