Hi

We went to school together...

...(awkward silence)

... so... what a crazy weather this month eh?

Small talk, it's called small (i believe) because it's supposed to be small, tiny, simple, and for a person with common social skills, free of complications. It is the most basic form of socialization, you talk of something of slight interest, and then, if all parties agree in an unspoken agreement, you continue to the actual conversation, or the big talk.

But it so happens that you always know when a person is just not able to do it, even if they try hard enough. You know when they look around simulating they're searching something/someone, but instead are just trying to avoid eye contact, you know them when they start only asking questions; and most obvious, you know them when they talk about the weather. Seriously, it could be that yesterday was hailing and today is a drough, and yet weather is just not something you put in small talk, hence all the jokes around it.

So when I, the penguin, say something about the weather, when I just met someone, you know they already know I'm a terrible conversationner, you know they already dissmissed me from the untangible secret list of interesting people. So why does the penguin do it? Because he just can't do small talk.

I really hate it, and not because I have an issue against small, or because I'm so complex I can't bother with such things, but because I find it terryfing. I understand it is just a little part of the whole social spectrum that human relations are, I understand is the way we have to tell the person, only with our body language what kind of people are we, because nothing can really be obtained from the small talk. So when I know this, and when I know it's just a phase of the social ritual I freak.

Because for me, it is not small talk only, for me it's like this trial where I am defyining my social status, an animalistic ritual; just like when dogs smell each other's tails, or when monkeys eat each other's fleas. It just feels so out of character, so primitive and animal. And I do agree, I agree we are all animals, but it just freaks me, when we do that, I feel like the shy puppy who's tail he dopesn't want anybody to smell. 

And I know, maybe (pffft...maybe?) I'm a freak. But if it was for me, first meetings would go something like this...

Hi, nice to meet you. What is your stand in moral absolutism being thought in the bases of youth across the globe?

And there would certainly be no speaking about the weather, no observing the person in it's primal interaction, no jokes that the other one doesn't understand. There would be so smelling other people's tails. 

And that is why I hate small talk, all its stupid rituals and connotations for acceptation...

that...or I'm just socially awkward...

By I'm the penguin