Small Talk, Big Hassle

2004-08-26 - 9:40 a.m.

Am I boring?

It's a bad sign when an entry starts with question whose answers can only be subjective.

I'm pretty lousy at small talk. Observe:

Weather: I usually don't care about the weather. Nice weather is nice, bad weather is bad, but generally I'll just trudge through whatever's going on outside without too much thought. Whenever the subject of weather does come up, it almost always turns into a discussion about the environment or social justice (when old, impovershed people start dying from the heat), which is certainly not small talk.

Music: I don't listen to much music. I've written about this before, but basically my life is almost as music-free as you can get in the 21st century. This isn't intentional, and I think music is fine, it just hasn't captured me the way it has captured so many others. If someone asks me who my favourite bands are, I have to say "I don't know. I kinda like notes."

The thing is, this isn't entirely true, either. I was in band for 7 years (from grade 6-12), and loved it. I enjoyed playing music, and I really enjoy participating in it. But when people ask you for your favourite song, they usually don't want an answer like: "Oh, well, the time we played that version of Greensleeves where I had that long, beautiful baritone horn/euphonium solo, and we played it at the local competition and one of my friends said she cried! I liked that one."

Movies: I'm learning that I don't like a lot of movies. I only see one every couple of months, maybe, but the "big" movies, especially those in my once-favourite genre (like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, etc), strike me as being wretched. It's to the point where I don't like telling people I used to watch Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, because almost always they liked the last few seasons, whereas I would probably like to rip out my eyeballs with my bare hands than watch that (in my opinion) tripe. It gets worse when I try to explain my opinion, because - especially with some Buffy fans - they respond with something like: "Well, maybe some of the episodes weren't up to par, but the themes of feminism and girl empowerment that they looked at were amazing! And they were witty! Like the time that Andrew said that Faith killed a Vulcan, when really she killed a vulcanologist! ROFLROFLROFL!!!!" Then I get really angry and we've left the realm of small talk.

Unfortunately, I spent most of my teenage years reading and watching sci-fi, when I should have been cultivating an interest in something else, like classic film, or avant guard art or something, because now if someone asks me about a John Waters film, or some musical that was produced in the '40s, I have to shrug my shoulders and change the subject (to Buffy?). I'm not saying I should have abandoned the whole speculative fiction genre, just that I probably should have consumed something else.

Books: Ah! Here is where I shine in the realm of small talk, provided that the person I'm chatting with reads (rare), and reads only classic novels by authors who died 50 years ago (more rare). Also, I have a really poor memory for some details, so any conversation here is "Oh yeah, I read that book. Um, it was a few years ago, so pardon me while I nod along while you talk, as if I understand what you're saying. All I really remember about that novel is that the rabbit was kind of sad, and wasn't there a passage about a waterfall that was nice? Or was that in The Great Gatsby?"

Is it any wonder that I make up bad jokes to break the ice?

Also, that last entry made me feel like a pompous fool who deserves to be mocked, so I'm not going to re-read it until the year 2199.

Cheers,

The Magus

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