Nietha.net

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that when other people see me, they immediately think that I don’t care about anyone, I’m obviously not happy and hate the world and blame everyone in it for my unhappiness. Some of that is true, just not to the degree they think.

This perception isn’t helped by the fact that my default face… ie, no-emotion face… it looks pretty unhappy. People seem to always believe I’m frowning when in fact I’m not anything, my face is relaxed/slack, whatever you want to call it.

For instance, this afternoon at work, we had just moved into our new office and I was just kinda taking a break from putting together a couple desks and looking around at the craziness of everyone else working on getting our new office into shape, and Dean said to me, “you don’t like change, do you?”

me: “…”

Dean: “I can tell by your face. you don’t look happy. out of everyone here, you look pissed off. you don’t like change”

Like total matter-of-fact. I really didn’t know what to say, because in reality, I don’t like change, so he was right on that, but as for moving offices? I’m not unhappy to move to the new office, the new office promises to be much more kick-ass than our old one, I think it’s going to be awesome. So I just stood there like an idiot. I think I said, “no, I’m not pissed off” and left it at that.

But back to what made me begin this post (the Dean comment is just proof that my relaxed face is perceived as an unhappy face), anyone who knows me knows that I hate talking to strangers. Strangers being, people I have no reason to interact with - I don’t consider employees of a store, etc, to be strangers, they’re worker bees. But basically, in general, if you’re not part of my life, I have absolutely no reason to make small talk with you.

I’m of the belief that if something doesn’t need to be said between two people that don’t know each other, then it’s natural to not say anything. I don’t want to talk about the weather, or how you’re doing or how I’m doing, because we both know neither of us care and the whole exchange is pointless.

So, every now and then I am unfortunately forced into awkward conversations in my apartment building’s elevators because I live on the 10th floor and the elevator’s super slow and I sometimes get stuck with people who have the opposite belief of… SOMETHING, I don’t know, but I think it’s along the lines of “I will die if I don’t speak with the person standing 1.5 feet away from me. oh-my-god my insides are going to explode if we don’t acknowledge each other’s presence in a friendly way”. Something alien like that.

I had a friend once that said she feels awkward in an elevator with others if there is NO talking. She found it less awkward to make small talk than to just be waiting in silence (I almost said sharing silence but I really don’t think it’s “sharing”). I think this had more to do with (my believe of) her thoughts of “oh-my-god what is that other person thinking, they could be thinking this and that and this about me! if I talk to them I will turn their attention instead to a meaningless conversation so that they can’t be judging me with all their thoughts”. Seriously, that’s what I believe to be the source of her feeling of awkwardness. This friend was always constantly worried about other people’s opinions of her. To the extent that she was uncomfortable simply walking down a sidewalk by herself, doing nothing that would occupy her OWN mind to protect against thoughts of wondering what other people thought of her. I tried to explain that how little she thought of others was how little others thought of her, but I don’t think I made any headway in that regard.

On the other hand, I think I notice a lot less of others than say, the “average” person does. I take so little notice of others because they, and/or their appearance, have so little importance in my life. I’d be a horrible witness in a crime situation. I’m terrible at describing people, even people I know very well, or interact with on a daily basis.

Now, obviously, people I know well and still notice very little about is not because I don’t care about them - I think I don’t save this kind of information because it has no relevance or bearing on my existence. Also, I believe a big factor is because I don’t have a creative/artistic mind; I’m just not big on anything visually. 98% chance I will not notice your new haircut (or even hair colour that’s, oh-my-gosh, 2 shades different), or your new clothes; while I’m happy you’re happy, I personally don’t care that you changed your appearance because you’re still just you and how you look or what you wear has no bearing on anything important.

Aside from increased memory capacity/recognition for visual elements, another way I notice that I differ from some people is how they react to things I feel don’t even deserve acknowledgment.
For example, I don’t understand people who turn their heads or turn completely around to be able to continue watching an ambulance or another emergency vehicle speed past them - what’s the point?
Does it impact your life? No.
Will you even freakin see anything worth seeing? No.
You’re going to interrupt your train of thought to wonder what’s going on? Why?
Emergency vehicles with lights and sirens going are so freakin common, who the hell cares?

Okay, this is getting kinda lengthy. People are weird and different from me, and I will never understand them, let’s leave it at that for now.

To the actual elevator conversations… I had 2 recently with 2 different neighbours and I just don’t understand why they feel compelled to talk to me.

First one, I was retrieving my finished laundry which is on the main floor and as I was approaching the elevator someone was entering the front of the building - being the nice person I am, I held the elevator. Upon having to actually take notice of the person to see if they’d be getting in the elevator, I recognized the individual as my next door neighbour.

“Great, 10 floors with the woman,” I thought.

I already know her as being talkative. One time she was chatting my ear off in the lobby when I just wanted to throw out my trash and it took me some seconds to find a polite way to end the conversation. Evidently standing there with a trash bag in one hand and a handful of recycling in the other didn’t give the impression that I was in the middle of something.

So she gets in the elevator and she looked a bit winded for some reason; she leaned in the corner of the elevator, against both walls.

Since I knew I couldn’t escape talking to her, I opened with, “long day?” (it was like 9:30pm)

She proceeded to tell me that she just got back from the island, where her sister is, and she did laundry there, but she’s really just tired because she’s been sick for the past 7 weeks.

me: “wow, that’s a long time to be sick”

Yeah, and she’s been in and out of the hospital, and she lost her job because she’s been sick so much, and they don’t know what it is and she’s even been told that it’s all in her head.

me: “sorry to hear that - have you tried going to different doctors?”

Yeah, and she’s waiting to see a specialist now.

We reach our floor, I get out and say, “well I hope you feel better and that you have a good night”

her: “thanks, I hope I feel better too. hey, what’s your name again?” (by this time we’re just standing in the hallway, me halfway to my door and looking back at her)

me: “Candice” and I purposefully do NOT ask for her name even though I’ve been told it a couple times before and have forgotten it. I do not care. I do not care that she’s sick. I do not care that she was on the island, with her sister, doing laundry. I do not care that she’s my out-of-work neighbour.

her: “Debbie, ho-”

and here we kinda talk at the same time -

her: ” - how are you doing?”
me, while unlocking my door: “well goodnight”

her: “that’s good” (you SEE how pointless the polite exchanges are? you will answer the same thing regardless of how someone answers, because they will ALWAYS answer the same thing themselves)

Awkward? Yes
Pointless? YES

Second neighbour run-in was in the morning, I came out of my apartment, heading to the elevator to push the button and instead I immediately turned around to lock my door first because there was a guy already standing there waiting for the elevator. I didn’t know he was there because I didn’t hear him because I was already listening to my music.

We get in the elevator, I have my headphones in, I’m nowhere even close to looking at him (he was at the back, I was towards the front, facing forward) and of course I hear him say something to me, probably ‘good morning’. Of course.

So I take one earbud out and respond, “morning”. Yay, 10 floors with a guy that wants to talk.

him: “guess we’re neighbours”

me: “guess so”

him: “I’m at the end of the hall” and he points the direction

me: “ah. with the 2 little girls?” (read: 2 children that scream in the hallway)

him: “girl and a boy”

me: “oh, sorry, girl and a boy”

We were around the 5th floor at this point and the rest of the way was silence. Approaching the main floor… I’m obviously getting out first and I decide I’m not going to say “have a good day” until we split ways at the front door as chances are he’s not driving since he didn’t get off at the 2nd floor.

We start exiting the elevator and he says, “well have a good day”

sigh.

me: “you too”

And then we proceed to walk to the front door, him following me. Like I consider that bad timing and awkward - we already said “goodbye” and we’re still walking almost together. lame. Why’d he have to talk at all? I’m surprised he didn’t ask me for my name or introduce himself.

Brings up my other annoyance - people who still attempt to talk to me even when I have headphones on! Or “in” I guess, since they’re earbuds, and it has been argued that maybe they don’t notice the headphones, but I argue back that my headphones are white and are therefore clearly visible.

I should just walk around with a double sign (front and back) around my neck that says “Don’t Talk To Me. Please.”