I hate to put you on the spot by asking… and I don’t want to scare you away… but I just wanted to ask why? I have to admit that I like the conversation… and just talking is only half the pleasure. I like to know what you think… even if you think it is all a load of bollocks. Not what you think… that is too vague. Your opinion. No, that is too vague too. You could easily mistake that word for meaning critique. I don’t mean that. I mean… when I write it’s only about life from my perspective and I don’t really know what it’s like to be you. And I end up wondering if it is the same, or different, and different how? That’s the bit of the conversation I want to get at.
I’m rubbish at small talk. Yesterday I was painting a porch and I don’t know why… but so many people kept stopping and chatting with me… beaming smiles and complimenting me on the work. It was nice. It felt good. But as I say, I’m rubbish at small talk and I always try and wrap things up really quickly. I just have no idea about it. I envy all you out there that can just chat away to the person at the bus stop or the lady at the checkout. I often think of something amusing to say to people at checkouts… but then I play it out in my head. They will laugh, and then I won’t have any small talk to follow up, so then we will stop talking, abruptly. And it will be awkward. So most times I back out of striking up conversation.
So here I am, chatting away here like I never ever do. And you are there. And I am here. And you are quiet. So I just wanted to ask you why?
Personally, I don't care much for small talk except for a few minutes here and there. I would much rather people talk about ideas or their perceptions of various things. Now to contradict myself, I am always one for starting conversations in stores with strangers. I think it is with the idea in the back of my mind that I can escape any time I might care to because I avoid like the plague talking with some of the neighbors here.
ReplyDeleteMy husband strikes up those kinds of conversations with cashiers etc. all the time. Me, I can't, actually I think I just can't be bothered. The only small talk I really engage in is about dogs with other dog owners. That's kind of cheating though because most people can talk about their dog for hours and I can talk about Max for hours too. Plus it's pretty obvious the person has a dog to talk about when he's walking it. Only twice has it ever happened to me that a person with a dog treated me like I (and Max) was invisible. Not nice. But I digress, basically I hate small talk because I suck at it.
ReplyDeleteHey Linda, well maybe if I bumped into you in a store we'd chat away just fine. 'Escape in the back of your mind'... see now right there, that is my problem. Escape is always at the fore of my mind when I'm talking!
ReplyDeleteJojesek... does your husband keep a blog? Only joking. Hey you are so right about dog owners... Molly, Charlie and I always get stopped and asked lots of questions but it always flusters me and to be honest, I always feel I'd rather be left alone to pet their dog without the conversation about ages, names, breeding, things that dogs do, why dogs are better than cats etc. It isn't that I'm not insterested... I just feel so awkward. Like you though, I guess i could probably hold lectures on the canine memebers of our family.
Anyway, here is to sucking at small talk. Clink.
What's it like to be me, Pres? Well it's the same but different :-)
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your blogs. They're well written so easy to read. You come away having learned something and a feeling that you (me) is part of a group and not out there on my own.
I think small talk is important. I think you have to be pretty happy with yourself to be able to chat away about nothing in particular with friends or strangers. I'm good some days and not others. Guess which days my confidence levels are higher?
Thanks for all the support and positive comments Pres.
Regards Spanner.
I absolutely panic at small talk with strangers. Like you and Jo, I can hold my own ok at the park with the dogs, but other situations, not so well. I think it's a confidence thing. At face value, I 'come off' pretty confident to people, but the truth of the matter is I feel very awkward and unsure of myself with people I don't know very well. I think it's sometimes perceived as being stuck up, and that just makes it all the worse from inside my skin. Weirdly, with my camera around my neck I can be bold as brass -- I don't know what Freud would make of that (or I do, and shudder to think of it) -- for me it's like a protective shield, a thing that keeps me a bit outside and safe even as I engage with people. Does that make any sense. I love your blog too, Med, btw. It sparks.
ReplyDeleteMr Pres! Lol. Spanner , I'm going to live to regret that post aren't I. : ) Thank YOU for all your kind words and supportive comments. You always give me a boost of Spanner Power.
ReplyDeleteAnais, what are we like eh. I'm starting to imagine that if we all met at a party we might all do well to bring our dogs. I can't stand the way it all gets confused with being stuck up, like you say. I know what you mean about the camera though. Whether it's been the times I was the best man, or dressed as a human sized sea gull called Leonard, or run a stand at a fayre, I've always enjoyed stepping into role and acted it out to the fullest. Somehow, it doesn't seem real... but it's great fun. By the way, you always make sense.
I think it's a man thing. Example. At the petrol station, I'll always pay at pump. The GF'll go in a pay because it's friendlier and they can chit chat. It's why there's always a queue to women's toilets - too much chit chat.
ReplyDeleteThere you go, is that enough blatent sexism for 11.15 on a Wednesday evening ;-)
Hope I haven't upset your readers...
What about online for small talk?
In the online world, blogs aren't necessarily the best for conversations. The format is quite "broadcast". That's why it's good to comment on other people's blogs. Twitter's a bit easier, but is short - but that's the appeal. Forums, well you get lost in the threads.
I sometimes wonder whether social media aids or ruins social contact. What do you think?
Interesting question Claw. I was hoping that a blog would lead to more converstaion than it has so far, but I've met some great people. I guess though, like real world converations, you still have to put the work in to find the right crowd for you... so you can get talking about things of common interest. Finding the right crowd takes time, and this is a big place. But if I am going to have conversations like people used to write letters, where we get to properly hear eachother out without the pressure of making a sound byte, i think Blogger does that in a way that twitter and the likes can't, and don't want to. Google+ may bring something new to the party with circles and hangouts, and I get the impression that maintaining Blogger and fixing its bugs is no longer of interest to Google. So I'll wait and see.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well if you fancy a geek talk catch up, let me know. As for blog platforms, I'm a fan of WordPress and Posterous, both of which allow you to import your blog. The best option is to host the blog yourself, then you can design it exactly how you want. I've got plenty of space on my server (well the tiny bit of it I rent), so happy to lend you that if you like.
ReplyDeleteTwitter's good as a sign post to your blog. You can use that to have little micro conversations that hopefully spill out on to your blog.
If it's conversations you're after forums work well as people go there to meet other members. But there's less room for self expression and I think that a lot of people get value from your excellent posts.
I am great at small talk! Partly it may be cultural. The Welsh are big on it. You get trained up from your youth whilst sat next to little old ladies on buses. 4 stops will give you the number (and names, ages and remarkable IQ) of grand-children and three most recent medical procedures (in detail) with little more than the occassional "really?" on your part :-)
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that makes it so much easier for me is that you doubt yourself from the beginning....."I can't do small talk", "I'll feel awkward/sound stupid", "They won't be interested in what I have to say/I won't have anything interesting to say". You are crippled from the outset. My approach is more interesting and possibly slightly masochistic....I get into the conversation and then start the paranoid self doubt reprospectively mid-conversation. I'm half way through before I decided that everything I'm saying is stupid or simply tedious to the other person. Then I force myself to continue in an attempt to redeem what ever faux-pas I might have previously made, ploughing on endlessly searching for a neat way to fix it and then escape a conversation that I'm sure the other person is probably despising.
Nuts huh?
Then at the very next opportunity I do it again!
I have been very lucky in that I am so very nosy that I really am interested in almost everything that other people have to say, regardless of how bizarre (or intensely personal) the topic might be. Subsequently I have had people at bus stops pour out details of their lives that they have never told their families, best friends, their priests or their doctors.
I decided a few years back that the thing about small-talk is that it is mostly just a way of saying "I am a person and you are another person. We are no threat to each other and we may even have some things in common. At this point we are occupying the same bit of planet-space and can do so in a friendly way."....It's because we stopped grooming each other for nits and it is considered impolite to sniff each other.
People don't need you to tell them something interesting and often prefer it if you ask them to tell you more about whatever they've said. It's just a little human contact....If it needed to be interesting why would half of all small-talk be about the weather when we can all see for ourselves what the weather is?!?!
Just my theory anyway :-)
Z:-)
Ooooh, just remembered something I read years ago re: Hooded Claw's comment about women - probably not sexism according to some scientist or other (an evolutionary biologist I think). Chap suggested that women use language differently from men based on early roles. Men needed "left, right, bison, rock" etc for hunting purposes but women were in charge of organising social structure and so needed more vocabulary and more subtle and complex ways of defining things............
ReplyDelete.........in other words us birds are meant to gossip as an evolutionary necessity!
Z:-)