On Tuesday i had a magical day. So magical that i knew it was too good to be true. I knew that some wrench would be thrown in my beautiful day, and smack me in the face (don't worry this has nothing to do with Rock & Roll. He's doing fine i might add).
My main source of social interaction is at work. It's like I'm practicing on my co-workers for the "real world" of social interaction. Without the crutch of school, i assume i will instead make friends with the people i work with, rather than classmate. Marie was concerned that she would not be able to make any friends outside of college, because she was so use to talking to classmates and forming bonds with them. It's logical, you spend so much time in class you eventually get to know the person(s) sitting next to you and...there you have it a friendship. I figure this works the same way in any scenario. You befriend the people you spend the majority of your time with, and in my case (for the summer anyway) I spend the most time during the week with them.
I am trying to make the best of my time, goofing around with Britton and Michael as much as i can, cherishing Amanda's daily eye rolls, talking to Debbie Downer about not so Debbie Downer stuff, and trying to decipher when and if Kathleen is being serious or funny. I would devote more time to Rock and Roll, but i don't want anyone catching on, so i sneak in as much conversation time as i can.
I can sense that everyone realizes that I am leaving, permanently, in a couple of days. I don't try to hide this fact from them. I say i will miss the good times and that i won't miss the bad times. For the most part i like the people i work with, and i realize we are more buddies than friends. We have flaky conversations about movies and music, and make irrelevant comments about youtube videos. I don't expect to see them ever again, but I'm content with the time spent in the library. It's sure to be a small, interesting blurb in the story of my life.
Tuesday was an ideal day. I got to talk to David (The grey-eyed beauty and platonic buddy), i briefly saw Rock and Roll, and when i went to study with Stef-en on Tuesday we had a fun time talking about Anne Hathaway and GQ magazine. He showed me some of his drawings and told me about the anime show he wants to create. We stayed in the computer lab until 8:30 just talking. He even called me his friend several times during the conversation, and i sort of bought it.
So on Wednesday i walked in, feeling pretty good which of course all came crumbling down when i saw Kathleen. Did i mention she was off on Monday and Tuesday. It was the best two days ever. It's not that i don't like Kathleen, it's just that i don't understand her. She always talks about how shitty i dress,or how unkempt my hair is, or how un-girly i am. When i tell her that I'm perfectly okay with myself, or i try to explain why I'm perfectly okay with myself, it's "Why are you being so defensive. I'm just trying to help you!!!"
?????
I take these moments in stride. I get a little flustered, change the subject, and then leave the room quickly. I know that i have a blog and all, and that i have spent the past couple of years writing about myself and my life. But in the real world, i don't like talking about myself. It's not something i do. I grew up in a family where privacy was cherished. Unless I'm completely comfortable with you i don't make an effort to tell you my whole life story. Apart of being a private person, is that i also don't readily ask people about their lives. I never know what people are comfortable talking about, so i keep it simple and basic, until i know their boundaries.
When i saw Kathleen yesterday, my heart kind of dropped. She is the instigator of making me talk about myself in a crowd of my co-workers. "What are wearing today, what did you buy today?", "where are you going after work?". It was a flutter of questions thrown at me. All she needed was a Law and Order interrogation table and she could have made me confess to a crime i didn't commit.
The end of that daywasn't terrible, thanks to a cute thing Rock and Roll did (which i'll quickly have to blog about after this post), but i feel without the last few moments with him i would have just called it a day and went to bed. Today, i made the awful mistake of staying in the office to type up some call numbers (it sounds as boring as you think it is). Debbie Downer had left for the day, and it was just me, Kathleen, some high school kid here for the summer, and Amanda.
I was listening to music so i could avoid any bad conversations. I had just watched Kathleen chew out Michael for calling her a bitch (which he didn't really call her), and i didn't want to be on the end of that conversation. I was minding my business, typing up call numbers, when the discussion suddenly turned to me. And i knew it was going to be bad.
Kathleen and Amanda ask me what i ate for dinner on a daily basis. As if my food intact will enlighten them about my awesomeness. It's the same conversation "what did you eat?" "frozen food" "Eww that's gross". I don't think i've ever asked anyone what they ate for dinner. It's not something i care to know. Knowing that someone had a burrito the other day, will in no way, shape or form, give me some grand insight into their character. If the highlight of our conversation is what i (or yourself) ate last night than clearly we have run out of things to talk about.
Of course they couldn't drop the conversation there. "Why did you eat that?" "Is that all you ate" "What did you drink with that". The OED describes an interrogation as "the action of asking questions". Knowing this information, i simply said "why do you guys care what i ate last night. I feel like i'm getting interrogated or something". And this is when the shit hit the fan. It was like one of those freeze frame moments in a movie where you hear a voice over announcing "Oh shit i have said something stupid", next to my stilled face.
"Why are you being so defensive. I don't care what you ate, i'm just trying to have a conversation with you". I don't know which one said it, it didn't really matter because when they are together their voices sort of blend. Proving that i am slightly defensive I followed my why do you care question with "Learning about what you guys ate today or yesterday isn't going to affect my day, so knowing what i eat isn't going to affect yours". It's the truth. I don't care what my friends eat, unless it's a huge part of their lives. I don't care what my friends wear, unless it's a huge part of their lives. I mean if i had said that i was a huge fan of cooking and wanted to be a chef, asking me about what i ate last night would be a logical question. But i eat the same thing every night, i rarely talk about food, and i don't remember what i drank with my frozen dinner.
Kathleen got SOOOOO offended by this. "Oh so i have to talk about something that affects you for you to care".Yes. This is what i have to deal with at work. My comment was completely taken out of context, but she kept pushing the issue. I'm sorry if i don't find talking about my rigatoni idinner an interesting topic to share with the masses.
What i failed to see was that their "food conversations" had nothing to do with what i eat for dinner. After about 30 minutes of arguing back and forth, Amanda left. I turned to Kathleen to ask her a question, only to see that she was pissed (or hurt) by what i had said. So i asked her what i had done to piss her off now.
Apparently Amanda and Kathleen like talking to me, but our interests are different. We don't watch the same kind of movies, listen to the same kind of songs, or enjoy the same kind of leisure activity. Though this doesn't bother me, it doesn't sit well with them. I'm one of the only other girls in the office, and i am not a complete pariah.
Asking me about food was a subject they knew (or at least thought) we would all connect on,
since I'm not into fashion, MTV produced movies, or musicians whose lyrics i can't interpret. For them food was the "safe" conversation...until i got all defensive. I admit, i felt a little like an asshole after she explained all that, but how was i suppose to know this through all the yelling.
You can never win with these girls, and I gave up trying too a long time ago. I don't know who won this battle, but i didn't feel any closer to knowing if they even like me. Not that it matters much, but the old adage seems true in this case "with buddies like mine who needs enemies"
1 comment:
hmmm. it does sound like they thought they were trying to engage you in conversation, and felt like you totally blew them off. EVERYONE'S social skills could use some work, i guess.
i'm terrible at small talk, really awful. i've learned to just ask people about themselves and listen with half an ear to their inevitably unenlightening responses. usually people will throw out *some*thing i can respond to, in some way.
but the thing is, they sound like they respond to your answers in a way that makes responding unpleasant. like their way of making conversation is to force you to open yourself up to their criticism. a more reasonable response would be: "oh i love these frozen potatoes that so-and-so makes, have you ever tried them?"
really, the more i hear and live in the world, it sounds like everyone on earth is pretty much terrible at social skills.
a cute thing from Rock & Roll?!??!! tell all!
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