Initially I found the lady who talks about her kids all the time annoying, but these days I have come around to admiring her impressive ability to turn every conversation, no matter how it begins, into being about her children. Today she wove a beautiful tapestry depicting her children’s illnesses out of the threads of a space heater discussion. Eventually, as always, my eyes start to glaze over when she starts listing off the various antibiotics and prescriptions to combat these illnesses, but I’m still amazed by the subtlety of the transitioning.
I no longer begrudge her talking about her kids all the time. Two things generally consume most people: their kids (I include dogs, cats and horses in this category), and their work. And as tepid as her children’s illnesses are to me, I’d probably rather her talk about that than her particular narrow area of research. Instead, I am left wishing I had her conversational skills. Have not a single thing in common at all with someone new you have met? You could grasp endlessly for things to say, asking the same dumb questions everyone asks (“so, what do you do?”), the answers to which you’ll forget anyways. There is a girl in town who I run into about every four months, and each time we have the exact same exchange: “So, what are you up to these days?” “Oh, nothing much, working, doing some yoga…” (here’s where both of us go on mental autopilot). I tried to mix it up last time I saw her:
Girl: “I’m doing some crafting, and cooking…”
Me: “Ooh, me too! This morning I made some souffles, and also I designed and sewed a sofa for my cat!”
Girl, who looks at me like I am CRAZY: “Wow, that sounds…nice.”
Hanging out with my eccentric friends makes me forget sometimes that it is not normal to do things like make a sofa for your cat, say, or have watermelon themed potlucks at which no watermelon is actually served. Next time I run into her, I shall stick to the script.
Another alternative is to be stuck in the dreaded endless loop of filler conversation. When meeting E’s relatives, I had the misfortune of sitting next to one of his uncles-in-law, who – though very, very nice – told the most long-winded, uninteresting stories. Well, not so much stories, because that would imply plot or point, and – well, this was kind of an art, too. He could construe very long sentences about absolutely nothing. Kind of like the ambassador in the first book in the Foundation series*, whose speech over the course of a week was analyzed logically and the filler words canceled out, leaving behind not a single word of content. I very much wanted to overhear what was going on at the other end of the table, where E’s aunt was regaling the more fortunate guests with tales of the history of the small town where they had grown up, and how things have changed (as you can see, I have a very high tolerance for things that would probably bore people) Instead I kept getting sucked back into conversation with the Say-Nothing guy. E’s stepfather sat on the other side of him, and later I found out that he dreads these get-togethers specifically because of Say-Nothing guy. Can’t say I blame him!
The best strategy, maybe, is to just seize control of the conversation and bring it over to your turf! Fuck it all, if you want to talk about nothing about Battlestar Galactica, just say that such-and-such person “could be a Cylon” and just run with it (I’ve seen this in action, with E). If you’re a parent you’ll have a vast trove of funny anecdotes about what your kids said or did. If you’re a crazy cat lady, ditto. If everyone in the world could be freed from convention, and actually talk about their passions – maybe together we could weave a fascinating story.
* NERD ALERT
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