He did not, in fact, have the slightest idea what the stranger was talking about.
Often strangers would talk to him in the street as though they were lifelong friends.
Total strangers talked to one another on commuter trains.
People smile at one another in the street and strangers talk to you.
He explained how strangers talked freely without caution as a sense of longing for something new and being somewhere other than the place they were.
She would never tell anyone what she and the stranger had just been talking about because, now, she too wanted to know the answer.
In the western culture, strangers talk to other strangers frequently.
Party lines were cheaper because you shared; now there is a party line where total strangers talk for $1 a minute.
The young women behind me stopped their conversation, and one said, "I hate when weird strangers talk to me!"