Roche Hugs

This past weekend i went to Roche Bros. with Alex to give free hugs. At first I was a little nervous because i wasn't really sure how it was going to turn out. I had an idea of how it would go before I showed up. I believed that people would most likely be judgment (especially in Wellesley) and would look at me like I was crazy. I felt like we would get stared at and have a few people come up to us and giggle and give us a hug. It was interesting, before I went to give free hugs I was getting my eyebrows waxed by a woman who really changed my day. I still remember what she told me a month later. She really seemed interested in who I was and wanted to know things about my life which was strange because that doesn’t usually happen. I told her about the project because I was about to go do it, and she loved the idea. She was giving me ideas on how I could write a paper on it and compare the women to men, children to elderly, ect. She seemed genuinely interested in this project and wanted to do it herself. She was the only person that entire day who didn’t ask me why I was giving free hugs. She embraced the idea, and asked lots of questions, none being about why or what was in it for me. She believed it was possible for someone to go out and just try to brighten peoples days by giving them a hug. She really calmed me down before I went to Roche. and made believe that there are people out there who have the ability to make a stranger feel important. We made a sign that said "Free Hugs" and decided to just stand in front of Roche Bros. When we got there we looked a little awkward for a few minutes. People originally just started laughing and would walk away. The first few hugs were interesting. A few awkward teenage boys came up and smiled, blushed, and asked for hugs. Then came the soccer dads with their little boys. There was a man selling smoothies next to us and he was dressed up in a banana costume. He was talking to us about our project and he thought it was a cool idea, and wanted us to let him know how it went. I got a picture of myself giving him a hug. I feel like it caught a lot of people off guard and they didn’t really know how to react. Some people seemed like they were really nervous and would walk by us with their head down so they didn’t have to acknowledge us. When the moms would walk by, they usually just smiled, giggled, and kept walking. There were one or two people who would walk by, look at the poster, and made a snide comment and walk away. Overall it was a huge success though, i would definitely be interested in doing it again.