it must be me because they are certainly normal, nice people. they just exhaust me.
heres the reason: they feel the need to just focus on me. i get told the stories. i get asked the questions. im the one who has to decide what type of dinner to get. who wouldnt get tired after even an hour? and its not like i just met them either. ill contribute to the conversation, just dont make it all about me.
it could be the family thing - everyone else there was related, so anybody new is, well, new. i can see that, but come on. i know it can be hard for others (i nearly wrote outsiders there, which probably has more truth to it) to be around my family. we make each other laugh, we are quick and witty. (im not saying that other families arent funny, because they probably are too.. but to us, we are each others favorite comic. no one makes me laugh as much as my family. now, to you, maybe not so funny.) but, when we are together, and there are others there, we do not inundate them with explanations about old inside jokes, or trouble them with stories from years ago. please, please, just talk about current events or hobbies or the weather, even. if you want me to just smile and nod for three hours while i invent reasons to leave in my head, then by all means, continue telling me about the time your mom put all the ketchup in the heinz bottle and your brother in law had no idea.
doesnt the glazed look on my face give me away?
seriously, listen to what my eyes are telling you.
the telling of stories, of course, has its own place. i have told my small share and heard a million of them from aunts, uncles, grandparents and the like. it occurs to me that perhaps that was their goal... to make me feel part of the family. or worse, make me actually part of the family at some future time.
i suppose ill just have to set everything straight tomorrow. but how to do it?
2 comments:
I was talking to someone today and she had that slightly glazed look a few times, but then I was mumbling something uninteresting about what i'd done at the weekend. She was laughing at something I said a few minutes later, but you never know the damage you do when you start getting all vague in a conversation.
its so true! perhaps i should have been more creative in steering the conversation away from the boring stuff. hehe
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