I’ve never made it any secret that I am not one for small talk. I’m perfectly fine with silence, either the comfortable or uncomfortable varieties — in preference over small talk anyway. It might be that it seems like an insurmountable task to engage in small talk now that I don’t have a drink or cigarette in one hand, the other, or both. It’s really a thing for me; I lost my ability to natter on about stuff when I went both sober and smober. The smokes and the glass/bottle gave me a prop to fidget with, to play a persona, a mask to slip inside when social situations called for loathsome small talk.
So, picture my dread this morning when I showed up early to a local passport office and limited DMV service center to renew my passport for some expected upcoming Canadian travel (recall those days when we could just use our driver’s license to slip over to Canada? Oh, those were the days!) and encountered not one, not two, but three individuals who thrived off of small talk. Engaging in such small talk. Loudly.
I’m just going to say it. Americans are perhaps some of the loudest people on the face of the planet. If their volume goes up to ten, they will turn it up to eleven while most people I’ve met from around the globe tend to talk at a three or four volume level.
And these folks were small talking about the most inane things, all the while repeating themselves in case you missed the inane thing the first time. That another thing us American’s seem to need: repetition in case the volume wasn’t loud enough.
You know what I did? I put on my old gothy mcgothy face and stared intently out into the late spring baseball field just beyond the parking lot.
Don’t. Fuck. With. Me. I will eat you for breakfast.
Yeah, that look.
It served it’s purpose to keep them from engaging with me, but it didn’t stop them from babbling on. How many times can you say that Minnesota is colder Nashville? Or that dandelion fluff makes more dandelions? And did I (as a complete stranger) really need to hear about how you had your jaw wired shut for six months after a trucking accident twenty years ago?
These kinds of government office visits are already tedious bureaucracies, adding small talk to the queue wait turns tedium to torture for someone like me.
Thankfully, they were ahead of me when the line finally formed and numbered tickets were taken from the spool and they were quickly assisted and shuffled off out of the building with little small talk within the hallowed walls of government.
At least my passport is in now and I can avoid those kinds of queues for a while.
Until I encounter customs at the border crossing, anyway.
A sentence should be like a serpent
Quick with a sting in its tail
String me a line that has meaning and depth
There's no small talk with walkie talkies
Small talk stinks
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