avoidance

I admit I've never been the best at social relations but throughout the years, I think I've come a long way from being painfully shy in front of everyone to being able to crack jokes with strangers on occasion.  As much as I've progressed, I realize I still have roadblocks, like when people converse with me on subjects I don't give a crap about.

How do you squirm your way out of inane topics?  Do you pretend there's an emergency on the other end of your "vibrating" phone call?

"This debt ceiling discussion is fascinating but my son got his penis stuck in the swimming pool filter.  Again.  The doctor said he could circumcise himself the next time this happens!"

Do you feign a bathroom emergency and politely excuse yourself from the topic at hand? 

"My apologies.  I'd love to hear about the grooming habits of your ferret but I've got to go to the john and pinch off a loaf."

Or, as I've been forced to do, do you stand there and take your punishment?

People are always talking to me about their kids or home improvement projects and frankly, I don't give a crap about either.  It comes from place of a lack of commonalities between me and the people I interact with on a daily basis.  I'm weird and I'm into weird stuff.  I don't have kids.  I don't like kids.  And I don't like HGTV so the chitchat about your electrical sockets gets lost on me.

And if the topics are boring, their unbearable, like when people want to tell me about dead animals.

Being an animal lover, I don't want to hear horrific encounters people have had with furry creatures, like how their pet goats were violently ripped apart by a pack of wild coyotes or how their fluffy new kitten crawled into their dad's engine and the mess it made when he started it up that morning or how they hit a deer with their car and it's leg got caught in the carburetor and it was dragged three miles until the tendon finally snapped, leaving the poor thing wailing and writhing in the road.  And then they finish off with h a sensitive, "At least it didn't ruin my paint job."

Every time someone starts up with a dead pet or abused animal, the ASPCA commercial starts rolling in my head and the Sarah Mclachlan soundtrack drowns out stories of slaughtered shetland ponies or drowned puppy dogs.

As I've said before, my job isn't physically hard.  But the mental exertion of pretending to be engaged in conversation with customers wears down on me.  To protect my sanity, I usually tune them out and employ the usual head nods and verbal cues to continue their stories.  All the while, I'm wondering when they will stop, or if they ever will.  Is this my hell?  Replacing the inferno with insufferable stories of potted plants and parenthood?  I just don't have the energy.

It's sad to admit I often evade these types of people.  If I see them coming (or in some cases, hear them, because their incessant laughing is so booming), I hide behind fixtures or walk in the opposite direction.  I've even ducked into a fitting room like I'm dodging a grenade and waited there, holding my breath until I hear them pass.

Now imagine having to do this dance daily.  And imagine getting caught like a fly in a spiderweb of stupid stories, tightly bound by social niceties, squirming on the inside but knowing it's futile.  You stand there and give up, laugh out loud and let the poison infect and numb your skull.