There was a man on the train yesterday (Jeff? Jeb?) who gave up his seat so that a family could sit together, and in so doing, sat next to me. I felt like that was a bummer, but it ended up being a bigger bummer than I had predicted. Jeb wanted to know where I am from, what I do, whether I want kids (REALLY? None-a yo’ bizness, old man), and wanted to tell me all about these things in his life. Great. His job – rebuilding houses and renovating the interiors – could be interesting, but not the way he told it. Though he loves his job, he is a terrible storyteller. And I probably wouldn’t care about his kids or their jobs on a good day, but especially not on three hours of sleep. I eventually stopped trying to hide my yawns from him, hoping he’d open the book he held and let me sleep. At one point, he said, “This is probably boring to you.” I tried to leave a significant pause before halfheartedly saying, “No, it’s not.” And danged if he didn’t pause, then pick right up where he left off. Touché, Jeb.
Thank God for the phone call he received, which gave me time to pull my book out of my bag and begin reading. Once he was finished with his call, he turned to me and said, “…but to finish what I was saying….” Thankfully he said only a couple sentences, then also pulled his book back out (it had been relegated to his bag once he saw that I was receptive to small talk) and opened it. He looked at the pages for a few minutes then smiled at me and said he was going to the observation car. Thank goodness. My earbuds went in, my seat reclined, and I settled in for a nice drowsy read until I slept.
The book I began reading, The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd, has this observation in the first chapter: “Small talk is small in every way except when you try to get around it.” Too true, Mr. Kidd. I smiled when I read it, and crossed my fingers that I was done with the worst of the day’s banalities.
