The conversation with the homeless guy the other night reminded me that I'm really not good at conversations. I didn't know what to say most of the time, so mostly I said, "Mmm," or "Oh," and let him carry the conversation, which he did fairly skillfully. This is also what I do on purpose when trapped into chats with bus drivers, the security guard, etc., hoping that they will find me so boring to talk to that they'll let me go. Sometimes it works.
Conversations are like a tennis match - your job as a participant is to return each comment with enough of a reply to get it over the net at a minimum, maybe with some topspin to keep things interesting. If you just say, "Mmm," that's the equivalent of missing the ball or hitting it into the net, and the other person has to serve again.
Sometimes when I'm watching a well-scripted conversation on TV I think, "There's nothing to say to that, this conversation is going to die," but then the character comes up with something witty and extremely clever and unanswerable, to which the other character then thinks of a reply, and so on. Each time I'm impressed by the "save." It's like watching a tennis match between real pros. I wish I had a script-writer for my life.
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3 comments:
I totally know the feeling. I often sit and listen to my mother in awe. It just comes naturally to her as it does to most other people, it seems. I don't know why it's so difficult. For years I had convinced myself that I was shy and now I see that it is just a matter of not knowing what to say.
Yeah. I wonder why it is that we don't know what to say. Is it just self-consciousness to the point of censoring all the interesting topics of conversation? Or lack of skill so the words to embody interesting concepts just don't spring to mind? Anyhow, I think it kind of sucks. In my next life, I want to be a voluble and articulate social butterfly. Or a cat. They have it pretty good, I think.
Cats are very lucky.
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