BREAKING ICE IS HARD

Yesterday evening, while trying to get her new computer connected to the internet and also describing a coworker who is too stupid to wear a face mask while in the office during this pandemic, the apartment mate stated as a blunt fact that I am more Aspergery than she is.
Well, butter my face and call me biscuit. She is the woman who finds it difficult to deal with people and is painfully antisocial. Whereas I am a ray of sunshine and so darn social that innocent people cannot resist my web of blandishments.


Eh, I think it's neck and neck.


I'm not good at ice-breaking. And if it weren't for Facebook and Caffeine, interacting with other people would fall by the wayside, and I'd just stand back and observe. For a while this blog was a significant part of my social life, as were the calls I made everyday, business to business, credit and collections.


"Hi, this is Darby MacDingus from Crappity-Crap Corporation, can I speak to John, please?"


And if I connected to John, I'd let him tell me about his recent vacation, his sister in Vermont, plus the Bubbly Blitzpah sisters and their monkey act, before we'd finally talk about the past-due invoice. Which he'd then promise to pay in two weeks, here's the cheque number, and thank you for your patience. Several months later I'd call him about another bill, and we'd continue the conversation where we'd left off.

Some of those conversations had installments for several years.


There was also the visiting rabbi from Long Beach who ended up calling my work number. Once I clarified that I wasn't Jewish, we talked for forty five minutes, and resumed conversing at a convenient venue near the office after I finished for the day. It helps that I have an odd memory, and often retain stuff that is of no interest to many other people.

I've noticed a very similar pattern with my apartment mate. So much so that I take staggering flashes of brilliance from her entirely for granted. As well as retention of data that really nobody remembers. Why she even knew the number of bones in the human foot when I was telling her about Little White Nipple Dude's claim that he was a podiatrist and that there were over two hundred bones there is ... peculiar.

There are 26 bones in the foot. These include cuboids, cuneiforms, naviculars, phalanges, tarsals and metatarsals.

She finds feet rather repulsive, by the way.

A sound foot is a thing of beauty.

I'm just saying.

26.



All of this came up because both of us dealt with a tech-support person who had that chipper positive chirpy everything gonna be all right tone that drives us up the wall.
I vastly prefer the several people I've recently dealt with telephonically at my insurance provider and the hospital where my primary care physician is officed. Not coincidentally, all of them are of Chinese Ancestry. Stressed, frustrated, rushed, well yes. But completely competent, efficient, and knowledgable. Very capable people who are not graduates of the chirping positivity school of communicating. Real folks, with nuts and bolts, and warm sparking wires.

That analogy could be further developed, but it would still be slightly berserk.

Life is not all happy chirping perky techno-muppet.

Some of us are frog like.




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