The Hallway

I don't know how to do small talk even though I know the script by heart. 

"Hi, how are you?” 

“Good, and you?“

“Good.” 

Everyone else around me seems to be able to take that thin little exchange and stretch it out into a real conversation while I get stuck at "hi" asking myself what we are going to talk about and what will happen next. The easiest solution has been avoiding putting myself in that position by rarely calling people outside my immediate family. With my mum, there's no "How are you?" because she already knows. We talk every day and when she calls again the next day, we just pick up where we left off. I have been told a couple of times that I come off as a snob because of this but I can’t help it. I only talk when I have something to say, not because I have to. A phone call that's going to be small talk from the beginning to the end is something I genuinely cannot get through, no matter how much I love the person waiting on the other side of it.

A while back I took my kids to a doctor's appointment that ran too long, so I stepped out to go to the bathroom. On my way back down the hall I spotted a woman sitting behind a desk typing something into the computer. I reflexively said, "Hello, how are you?" expecting the usual. "I am good" because that's just how things work, and I would pass her by, go back to the room, and go on with my life.

She didn't say that. She said I am not good.

Her answer caught me off guard, and my feet came to an abrupt halt. She had just taken my next line and I didn't know how to respond, so I just stood there giggling awkwardly while my brain ran a whole conflicting internal monologue. My presence there suddenly felt so unnecessary, so I walked past her line of sight and stood further down the hallway where she couldn't see me to think about whether I should go back and ask if she was really okay or whether that would be too much. I decided not to, because I was a patient, she was working, and we were not friends. I could not walk back into a stranger's day uninvited just because the door happened to open a crack, so I walked back into the appointment. 

In the car going home, I kept wondering what kind of person I was for not going back. I have been told so many times I read things into people that were never there to begin with. If that's the kind of person I am, why did I keep quiet this one time someone gave me her truth plainly?

I wonder if it's because as humans we have very limited capacity to deal with other people’s problems because we are so busy dealing with our own, so “how are you” stopped being a real question and became something we just say. Because I for one don't tell the truth about how I really am to someone who is already emotionally depleted or burdened by their own issues. Except she didn't, maybe because I was a stranger and she could tell me the truth because she would never see me again. I have a feeling that if I see her again, she won’t remember me or this conversation. For me, on the other hand, this interaction will live in my head rent-free for years because I honestly don’t know the difference between a moment that’s asking for me and one that isn’t.