Introductions

I don't small talk.

I also don't hoe-down, but that's another post.

There's nothing I hate more than being forced into mundane conversation with people I don't know.  I hate when clerks at grocery stores go beyond the "hello, how are you today?" pleasantries and make comments about my purchases or what my plans are for the weekend.

Especially when my purchases are my plans for the weekend.

Why else would I be buying a package of Double-Stuf Oreos on a Friday night?

Social situations are not much better.  It takes me a long time to warm up to people.  In the meantime, I'm not very good at chatting with them.  I never know what to say or what questions to ask, and I feel awkward and stupid.  I hate being forced into these stiff conversations.  This is why I rarely attend parties.

Oh, parties.

I'm not much of a surround-myself-with-lots-of-superficial-friends kind of person.  I'm much more of a hang-out-with-one-or-two-people-that-get-me-and-that-I-feel-comfortable-with kind of person.  But I go to parties occasionally because it's important for me to be a human being and not a hermit crab.

Or a hermit human, rather.

Whatever.

Potato, potato.

My favorite friendships - not necessarily my most meaningful, but my favorite - have been with people who have skipped the small-talk altogether.  I have one friend from high school, Jaz, that I still see on rare occasions at baby showers and things like that.  I love seeing Jaz, because every few years when we run into each other we don't play the "and what's new with you?" game.

Catch-up talk is just small talk with a different hat.

Jaz and I don't bother with asking each other about our jobs, where we're living, or what we've been up to for the last couple years.  Instead we usually launch right into some topical conversation as if we were picking up where we'd left off last time we met.

I've had a few other people who, within minutes of meeting them, I've found myself having a discussion about whether a tiger or an alligator would win in a fight.

Tiger, by the way.

I would much rather get to know somebody by learning about their preferred chip-to-cheese ratio in nachos or what Disney character they would want to bring to life than by learning about their job or their family or their school work.

I figure if I get to be actual friends with somebody, I'll learn all that stuff organically and in due time.  But for starters, let's make it a little more interesting and talk about that special on TLC where the guy had the bugs growing in his brain or if we'd rather have hands for feet or feet for hands.

Because if that's not the kind of random stuff you're thinking about anyway, we probably won't be very good friends at all.

Unless you bring me Oreos.

Foul Play

My very first real job was with the SL County Parks and Recreation department as a referee for their junior soccer league.  I was 15, and had never played soccer aside from playground pickup games.

I did not then, nor do I now, know the rules of soccer.

That's not entirely accurate.  I know some of the rules.  For example, I know that the ball has to stay within the lines on the outside of the field or it's out of bounds.  And I know that when the ball goes in the net it's a goal.

But that's about it.

It was easy enough to fake it when I was reffing for the three-year-olds.  Every thirteen seconds I'd have to blow the whistle because the ball went out of bounds.  They almost never scored goals, and at that age they didn't keep track of points, anyway.  I spent a lot of my time on the field tying the kids' shoes.

The seven-year-olds, however, were a different breed.  The kids themselves still didn't quite understand the game and were just in it for the fun of running around on grass and kicking a ball.  But the parents... the parents were out for blood.

It usually took them until about two minutes into the game to realize that I had no idea what I was doing.

"Come on, ref! What're you doing?" they'd scream from the sidelines, fists clenched, faces red.

"I wish I knew!" I'd think.

"Stay off the field!" I'd say.

I'm pretty sure that's a rule.

One day, one parent was particularly upset.  I can hardly blame her.

I mean, I've seen Jurassic Park.  I know that a butterfly flaps its wings in Peking and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine.  Seemingly tiny, insignificant events can create absolute catastrophe.

So when I, a poorly-trained teenager with a plastic whistle, carelessly called a foul on her precious little child when he merely kicked an opponent in the back of the knee, I must have opened Pandora's box.  Because that child had a foul called against him, because the other team got a penalty kick, because that penalty kick was missed and the game resumed, that woman's kid would not grow up to become President of the United States.

Also, that woman would not be able to see the end of her son's soccer game, because I kicked her off the field for rushing out me and screaming.

It's all my fault.  I can see that now.

I'm sorry, America.

When soccer season ended and the Parks and Rec department released the work schedule for basketball referees, I wasn't on it.  I still don't know if I was fired or just overlooked.

Phones

What is wrong with people?

I just answered a phone call at work.  It went a little something like this:

Me: "Good afternoon, this is Kristen."

Caller: [in a demanding tone] "Bob or Joe."

That's it.  No "hello," no "may I speak to," no "please."  Just "Bob or Joe."  Would it have been that difficult to actually ask for either of them rather than just blurt out their names?  If the caller had added a simple "please" at the end, or an even simpler "hi" at the beginning, or had even spoken to me in a tone that didn't sound like he was accusing me of dipping his cats in boiling oil, it probably wouldn't have bothered me so much.

Who am I kidding?

Yes, it would.

I hate answering the phone.  This is mostly because approximately 137% of the people I have to talk to have exceptionally poor phone etiquette.

I often blogstalk a friend of mine who works at a public library and writes highly amusing posts about his phone conversations with socially retarded patrons.  A former roommate of mine often shares stories of crazy phone stories from her job at an architecture firm.  While it should make me feel better to know that I'm not alone in having to deal with these people, it doesn't.  It just makes me more upset.

If I am on the phone with stupid people all day, and my friends are on their phones with stupid people all day, and we all have such different jobs that the chances that all of our stupid people are overlapping each other is practically non-existent, then it only makes sense that most people who are on the phone all day are having to deal with stupid people.

And if there are so many stupid people making these stupid phone calls, then I must assume that some of the people who are on the phone with stupid people are day are, in fact, themselves stupid people.

Based on highly advanced mathematics I calculated in my head as I was typing this sentence, I'm fairly convinced that, worldwide, there are only 27 people who I could talk to on the phone without wanting to punch them in the face.

Unfortunately, none of these 27 people ever seem to be the ones calling my office.