The engineer from North Carolina was laughing, but not in a mean way. Amused and caught off guard.

"So what you just said is that you used to be afraid of serial killers, but now you hope if you meet one, he'd find you too interesting to kill."

I guess it does sound funny, but I meant it. It was the only way I could make peace with this fear.

"Yeah, I used to be so concerned with them. Just having the wrong person fixate on you and for no reason, want to hurt you. But now I just think there are so many people in this world, each really only doing things for their own reasons, so I hope that even if I met someone who had a lot of dark thoughts, they would find me intriguing enough to leave me alone because they'd be curious in what I end up doing with my life."

"I would be interested in knowing what you do with your life."

"So would I."