Alezandra Tolliver

A list of moments when you’re talking to someone and you can just feel the relationship do this:

• When you meet your best friend’s other friend
• “Well, playing devil’s advocate…”
• Going to someone’s house for the first time, and  you learn they don’t let their pets on the couch
• “I don’t believe in tipping”
• When you show someone a funny video and they don’t laugh
• The entire car going quiet after you start playing one of your favorite songs
• Getting in the elevator after
• Mid-semester, and walking into a lecture to see someone has taken “your” seat
• When your date is rude to the barista
• “Bouncing off that thought, I think…”
• When someone pulls out their phone after asking about your day

I don’t even know where to begin to describe the feeling of incompatibility that happens when getting to know someone.  Or the frequency in which it occurs yet I am still not used to it. Removing yourself from the conversation is never easy either.  Some conversations can’t just rebound with abrupt subject changes. Nah. Like a sticky, viscous goop, it overwhelms everyone as they silently conjure ways to pull apart.  There’s nothing I hate more than being stuck in an awkward conversation.

I’m not the most socially-inclined person.  In recent years, I’ve taken steps to get better. I no longer pretend to not hear people as I walk downtown. I greet strangers on the sidewalk and chat with people at stores.  Do I want to do this? Nah.  If I could magically find a way to exist without people knowing, I’d do it.  I’d wear the invisibility cloak down to the bare fibers. But social convention calls for interacting with actual humans, so I at least want to make it as pleasurable an experience for everyone involved.  Though inevitably, just when I think I’ve gotten the hang of banter, I decide to take a risk and ask a question. Let me drive the conversation for once.  And I manage to pick a question that destroys the momentum.  It’s like a road worker popping up in the middle of the highway with a sign, “You really don’t want to keep talking to this person, exit here.” Yet, instead of retreating, our silly problem-solving brains want to fix it.  But you can’t.  It just gets worse, and 10 years later at 2 in the morning, your mean sleep-deprived brain recalls the entire conversation with ridiculous accuracy. I couldn’t even remember what I had for lunch that day.

We are constantly meeting people, individuals who have developed their own way of talking with family, friends, coworkers, etc. Every person is a new puzzle to figure out.  I find it fascinating that we still seek companionship despite all the hiccups. Despite the bodily reactions to the embarrassment. I think most of us wish we had the charisma to leave everyone in our wake in the green, but life’s not built for that.  We just hope enough time passes to look past it and try again.

Or maybe just start a new save file, nothing wrong with a fresh start with new people.