Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
seems to me that long conversation yielded alot.
Yes, there's lots of uncomfortable banter that happens when people meet sometimes. It sometimes stems from people making assumptions about the other individual and then correcting them by asking for more information or clarification. It's not usually meant to be insulting, it's meant to be informational to the person querying.
|
That makes sense. Maybe it's the assumption she was making that just because she wanted to know more about me that that would mean that I'd want to share that information.
Then again, I was looking and analyzing her at the same time, ethnicity, dress, nails, accent, name, etc. I was just doing it differently, and without verbalizing my assumptions and checking them with her in that way.
I wonder if she'd have been offended if I'd asked her if she was Korean, as I assumed, or commented on how the accent surprised me coming from an Asian woman. Given that she didn't have any qualms asking about my ethnicity, going so far as to ask a couple of probing questions, I somehow doubt it, but that isn't something that I could have known on the fly at that time. I still don't think I'd want to make that assumption based on so little information and then say something that would offend her or appear to be racist. Then again, I'm already making that assumption, in making any kind of judgement about her based on ethnicity, I'm just not expressing that aloud.
Quote:
|
People have expectations. Sometimes we as individuals alter those scripts of expectations. To me this conversation is quite enlightening about how an educated person that wanted to get to know you and give you advice in the same conversation.
|
That's part of my problem. I understand the basic script, but don't know how to alter it on the fly, so to speak. And when the conversation goes so far off the rails that it leaves the original neighborhood and ends up three states away, I get completely lost, as you can see by my completly lack of contribution above.
Quote:
|
Let me point out that the conversations you have here, the information you interject here, belies your introversion. You speak here with confidence of subject matter.
|
When I'm "here", I'm physically at home, usually with Grace around somewheer, often with Sissy. I'm in a comfort zone. I have the luxury to pick and choose which of the thousand different conversations I want to join, and or to just hang out and read, be a wallflower that watches and observes without being involved. And I express myself much better in writing than in speaking.
Hmmm. Actually that's not entirely true. Given the right subject--children's literature, poetry, transsexuals, lesbians, comic books, pedagogy, Scrabble, kung fu movies--I can talk easily and comfortably, because I know the script beginning to end, and I can handle tangents; hell, the tangents are fun. I'm also in a comfort zone when discussing those things, home or class, which makes it far easier. There is, however, no script to follow with a casual encounter with someone you don't know in a college corridor, and public places aren't comfort zones, so I'm out of my element both intellectually and emotionally.
That's after-the-fact analysis, of course. In the moment, I just worry about whether or not I should air what I'm thinking, and possibly offend or sound foolish or end up embarrassed.
Quote:
Transfer that ability to real life. Yes easier said than done, but not impossible. We don't bite, and neither do people in real life (unless you ask them too  )
|
Well, Grace does, but . . . dammit. You had to go and take my joke. It's not really fair for you to toss out the setup like that and then take it for yourself.
I don't know how I could transfer that to real life. Unless she somehow ends up in my home, I'm not going to have her in a comfort zone where I can bring up the things I was thinking.
Gilda