parts of speech

i hear it all the time: "why don't you say something?"

"why are you so quiet?"

"you don't talk much."

the most recent instance, a saturday night. my son was in town for the evening and was at my house with his new girlfriend and some friends of theirs whom i'd not seen in a long time. all of them early-20-somethings preparing for saturday night shenanigans, i had little to add to the goings-on. i was in the room, taking them in and enjoying having them here, when i wasn't doing a small bit of catching up. "basking in the atmosphere they were creating" is the best i can do to describe it.

my daughter was also at home, and she had a friend of hers over. her friend, an artless pipsqueak of a girl whom i love as if she were my own, said it this time: "you're all quiet over here."

i didn't get defensive, or offended, or angry.

"that be how i do." is what i told her.

usually the remarks come from people i've seen in some sort of regular, day-to-day context - acquaintances. occasionally, though, i get one of them from a complete stranger, someone i've just met. Whatever the source, the blurted and tacky, tactless and impolite noise-for-the-sake-of-noise always makes me wonder how they'd respond if i followed suit.

"why don't you say something?"

because i have nothing to say.

it's worth mentioning that i've said this many times. while i've learned that it's not rude, not exactly, it does have a tendency to alienate people.

"why are you so quiet?"

why are you so talkative?

"you don't talk much."

you talk too much.

not that i'd choose either of those responses - they're rude and confrontational and blunt, and i have a pretty strong tendency to not be any of those things. unless i know you fairly well and i'm comfortable with you. or unless i'm writing words at a screen. then i can be rude and confrontational and blunt. i can even be a dick sometimes.

but in real life, with all the sometimes-far-too-real people? not so much.

so. why am i so quiet?

i'm not, if the right handful of people are around, and the right topic comes up. my absolute favorite is when an absurd notion turns into an epic speculative-nonsense planning session that serves only to amuse anyone involved. i can do serious talks as well, though i'm better at commiseration than i am at giving good advice. i tend to avoid talking about issues that have sides. too many people are far too entrenched in their views and far too quick to consider a difference of opinion a personal slight. i don't want to deal with it.

i've got nothing against small talk - strangers in public asking me "how's it going?" or "how ya doin?" or a million other variants on "hi" are... i don't know. maybe they're putting out their feelers for suitable additions to their people collections.

maybe it's a compulsion.

i don't know what's going on in their heads, so i couldn't say. i'm a huge fan of small talk when it comes to people other than random strangers, because... how else are you going to find out whether someone is worth getting to know? i've had very few deep, significant, or meaningful conversations with people the first time i met them. the exceptions have been far between as well as few, and none of the people from those conversations remain a significant part of my life.

in groups, i often find that i'm talked over or ignored when i have something to add to whatever's going on. this has trained me to keep what i have to say to myself, to watch what's happening instead. one-on-one, that's not really an option. i have one end of a conversation to hold up. because i'm pretty resistant to "take-a-side" discussions, have little interest in most pop-culture talk, and would prefer silence nine times out of ten, i don't do well in that situation.

the thing that keeps me quiet the most? far too often, i string words together in sentences that i reckon are perfectly coherent, but that people hear completely differently. for a guy who doesn't like to talk a whole lot, this can lead to a whole bunch of additional talking to clarify what i said in the first place.

so. again. why am i so quiet?

it could be just about anything.

Helping!

One of my Facebook friends posted this picture recently, with a bit of vague affirmative text as a caption. It struck me immediately in a visceral kind of way, neither negative nor positive. Mostly because of how I had a million other things on my plate at the time.

So I grabbed it, confident that I had something to say about the message: "People you help may harm you in the process. Don't ever help anyone."

That's what I got from it, anyway.

Today I'm back at my mindless job, one which takes up all of a third of one compute cycle in its most trying moments. Currently I'm stuck waiting on other people to do their mindless jobs while my work piles up- I can't do a thing until they've finished.

So my mind wandered, and in wandering, it settled on that image. Instead of funny cat videos. Or sports stats. Or girls in bikinis. Or a million other things it could've settled on.

The message "don't help because you might get hurt" is a pretty disgusting one, I think. It implies that you're helping for your sake, not theirs. And THAT implies that you're helping because you think someone is watching. Because you're hoping for some kind of reward. Or because you're afraid of being punished for not helping.

If you want to help, just do it. Don't expect "karma" to win the lottery for you in exchange for your deed, and don't go looking for a ticker-tape parade. Sure, you'll get a few pats on the head. Maybe even an occasional cookie.

The sad fact is this: most times, helping will bite you in the ass.

Preface/disclaimer time, and then an anecdote.

I'm not comfortable around people, individually or in groups, and I prefer my own company whenever I can manage it. While this sounds antisocial, it really isn't. You wouldn't be able to tell from my attitude most of the time, but the pool of people whom I genuinely dislike is very small- I'd not even have to remove my shoes and socks to count them.

That's not to say that I'm some kind of Gandhi figure - not even a little bit! I'm quick to judge and quicker to anger, I can be mean and uncharitable, and I have a lot of trouble putting myself in others' shoes. At the same time, I'm quick to forget and don't hold much truck with grudges. I like most of the people I meet, and even with the ones I don't really so much, I can find some kind of redeeming feature of them. I wish them well, one and all. We're all in it together.

A little less than a year ago, I gave up my second job after my wife graduated from college and started work. I'd been cashiering in a gas station on my days off for about 14 months, and as you might expect, I met a lot of people during that time. All kinds of them: locals, long-distance travelers, drunks, addicts, harried parents, irritated commuters, regular people, people who think gas station cashiers are beneath their notice, talkers, crazies of all stripes... All manner of humanity came through the doors.

I had a lot of small-talk practice during that time being around the regulars whom I got to know fairly well, as well as all the single-serve folk. This is something I'd been without for a long time: plain old, garden-variety contact. I'm not a shut-in, I'm not agoraphobic. Generally I don't go out if I don't need to, but there's nothing physical or mental preventing me from doing so. I simply like my own place, and I REALLY like people best when they're somewhere else.

It wasn't this year's Easter Sunday - because I no longer had the job - but in 2014. I was working a shift at the gas station as I was off from my full-time job, and a woman dressed for Easter (think church, not bunnies) came in after pumping gas. She used the restroom, wandered the store, and picked out a few other items for her travels, but it was when she tried to pay for everything with a money order that things went wrong. The store I worked for didn't and doesn't accept them as payment, and that was all the woman had.

No cash. No cards. No checks. Nothing.

I was working with the assistant manager at the time, who was irritated and ready to call the cops on the woman for having a tank full of gas for which she couldn't pay. Thinking of how I'd feel in her place, with it being Easter on top of everything, I paid for her gas. And for the extra stuff she got to go along with it, because even though I'd have to work all of that shift and part of another to cover the cost, it's just money.

Right?

I wish I could say that I paid her bill with no expectations, but that would be a lie. Even though she looked the part of saintly grandmother, when I wrote my name and phone number on her receipt, I did it fully expecting never to hear from her again. A year-and-a-half hardly qualifies as "never", but so far my expectation has been met. I'd be less surprised to be abducted by aliens, or to learn that my cats speak english, or to discover that I'm Canadian royalty, than I would be to hear from her again.

That being said, I'd do it again, if the circumstances were right. Not because "the boss is watching and will be impressed". She wasn't - she thought it was a dumb thing to do, and judged solely on the matter of $50 +/- and whether I'd have it to spend on myself, she was completely right.

Not because "karma will even things out". It won't, because that's not a thing.

Not because "I won't be able to sleep tonight otherwise" or because "I get the warm fuzzies from helping" or because "It's the right thing to do". "Wouldn't be an issue", "I don't", and "Depends on the situation", respectively.

I'd do it - and try once again to leave my expectations at the door - simply because I'm trying to get better at putting myself in others' shoes. That, and while I have a tendency to judge and scorn people for being self-centered, for seemingly working to make the world a more difficult place to be for everyone else, I don't often follow my own advice.

So I guess my own drive to help - such as it is - is self-serving. I'll go back to funny cat videos now.