In reading Dave Barry’s “Dave Barry in Cyberspace,” he makes a (circa 1996) observation about a certain kind of person we’ve probably all encountered:

“I carry my laptop computer everywhere, and I’ve found it to be an invaluable tool for getting into deadly no-escape conversations with friendly people sitting next to me on long plane trips. You know those disturbingly friendly, Forrest Gump-like people who get on cross-country flights with absolutely nothing to read or do, so that after they have studied the barf bag (this takes them about 20 minutes) they start to prey, leech-like, on the passengers around them for entertainment? I am always — apparently it is an FAA regulation — seated next to these people.”

This doesn’t generally happen to me, but I’ve watched strangers next to me dig into the in-flight magazine as if it were the New Yorker, stare into space or become instant friends with the stranger next to them. (I request either an aisle or window seat, lose myself in a book and am generally left alone.)

I’ve also been in a jury assembly room in Pomona while people who have arrived empty-handed strike up conversations with strangers. A judge there once polled potential jurors, including yours truly, on what we’d brought to read and only a couple of us had books. One had a magazine and another had spent the morning reading the jury pamphlet. “You read that?” the judge asked, amused.

Who are these gregarious, Forrest Gump-like people who know they’re in for a long wait and yet show up with absolutely nothing to read or do?