Do you ever?

Upon catching a familiar face out of the corner of your eye while out and about, do you ever find yourself absolutely dreading interaction? Not because you hate or even dislike the person, but because you absolutely can’t stand having a conversation with them. It’s so amazingly, intensely uncomfortable that you’d do most anything to avoid it? Possibly even run away hoping they didn’t see you?

Context: I was in a local store the other day, and spotted an old friend’s mom. Er, actually that doesn’t really give the full context, either. Back up. Ya know how oftentimes you have ‘acquaintances’ that aren’t aware they’re acquaintances? That might sound obnoxious, but I’m sure most of us have had them. The folks that seem to think you’re best friends forever, despite never doing much together or having meaningful conversations of any kind? Do you remember that kid that your mother used to make you play with, or forced you to go his house to spend the night because ‘he doesn’t have any friends’? So you’d spend the entire day before trying to convince her to not make you do it, and then begrudgingly go only to find out his sister had just peed on the couch you were supposed to sleep on or his mom had made Government Cheese pizza for dinner? She wasn’t exactly that kid, but she was probably a step between that and the really weird kid in school you were nice to ‘that one time’.

Now, that it’s her mother alone wouldn’t normally daunt me. I can talk with just about anyone, and I’ve never been accused of not talking enough. But her mother is one of those people that seems to ask questions that she has no interest in knowing the answer to. You begin to respond, and she either A)stares blankly or B)ignores what you’re saying and immediately moves on to something else she doesn’t care about. This process repeats throughout the entire conversation, and worse yet, she seems to enjoy it. No matter how disinterested she is, she will continue to ask these questions until you put a stop to it by walking away. You keep waiting for her to move it to a topic she’s engaged by, but it never happens.

So the situation is thus: 1)You’re talking to someone considerably outside your age range, so what you have in common is already limited (I’m much better with the elderly than I am with the middle-aged, for some reason), 2)You’re talking to someone you’re only connected to via another person you don’t particularly know well, either and 3)They only want to have a conversation for the sake of having one. It is for these reasons that I dread seeing her, regardless of circumstance, and am constantly exploring effective methods of avoiding these situations all together.

Just so you all understand what I’m talking about: At one point during the conversation, the subject of an elderly relative came up. I had been taking care of this person for some time, and she was asking ‘how it was going’. As I explained that she had just recently PASSED AWAY, she began to drift off and browse the store shelves. She then turned back to me, and said ‘So you aren’t doing that any more then?’. This happens every single time we speak (not on that particular subject, obviously). It’s not even that I’m angry or offended, I just have no idea what to do when this happens. I’m thinking next time I’ll drop a bell in her pocket so I’ll have some kind of advance warning system.

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Sondre Lerche – Two Way Monologue