I’m not very good at small talk. It took me until my early twenties to realize that most things people say really don’t need a literal answer. So if, for instance, a coworker jokes about a friend visiting Egypt and getting eaten by alligators, it’s just unnecessary awkwardness for me to point out that crocodiles live in Egypt while alligators live in North America, oh, and by the way, a fun fact about crocodiles…
And so on. You’re just supposed to laugh and move on, right? Just stop your inner pedant.
One Sunday recently I was at the Super Target, buying beer, because it’s about the only place around here that’ll sell me off-sale alcohol on Sunday. The clerk says, “What, you were watching the game and ran out of beer?”
I don’t really follow sports. I didn’t even know what sport she was talking about. That answer seemed a little rude and definitely pointless, so I just laughed and said, “Yeah, heh heh, you know how it is…”
Completely not laughing, she asks, “What’s the score?” Oops.
Without a glimmer of social graces, I clumsily mumbled something about just joking and that I didn’ t really know.
Help me out here, Dopers. I’m not the only one this happens to, right?
No, it’s just you.
Just kidding, I’m always doing stuff like this. I’m pretty much the same way about sports, I used to follow NFL, but just got out of the habit. I’d start talking football and realize they most current football player I know of is Art Monk.
It’s too bad you’re not from Washington, then you could answer any football question with “the skins suck.”
This kinda happened to me this morning… I don’t follow the yankees at all… But out of boredom at breakfast at a cafe I was reading about some new contract or other… Waiter comes up and says “wow… blankety blank million… all for playing a game”… etc… etc… we talk about how we’d do anything for ten times as long for that amount of pay… even shovel crap, even etc… etc…
Talk goes to the manager moving games… We both talk about how it’ll be odd… years and years of seeing him in the dugout… etc… etc…
I mention something nondescript about how players switch around so often now… And new pitching style I’d heard someone else talk about the day before (more specific pitchers making no hitters less likely)… All just to keep small talk up.
And he mentions Torre going to the cubs.
I go “Huh? Thought it was L.A.?”
“Oh yeah” he says… “I forgot, meant L.A.”
Turns out we were both pretty much bullshitting about a team neither of us knew a whole lot about… I was repeating something I didn’t know much about that I’d heard the night before and he was talking to me about the team and vaguely knew their manager had been hired by another team.
Both recovered and went back to what we were doing… Me reading, him serving someone else.
A waste of five minutes.