boxofdelights

I eat out alone a lot. I like it. I bring a book.

I'm a creature of habit. I like going to the same restaurant every week. I also like the fact that waiters remember whether you are a good tipper, even if you are a fat middle-aged odd shabby woman eating alone, with dirt under her fingernails and a book.

Pretending that a professional interaction is a personal one is always going to make me uncomfortable. It's hard enough making eye contact and small talk with my friends, when I really like them and I trust that they really like me. I understand that service workers pretend to like customers because they (or their managers) believe customers like it. I cope with it as well as I can.

This musing brought to you by a new waiter at my favorite restaurant, who addressed me as "my dove". Immediately after a conversation with the people at the next table in which he disclosed that he did not know who Warren Zevon was. If you do not know who Warren Zevon was then you are too young to even pretend to flirt with me. I do not expect you to know this rule, child, since I just made it up, but if you are going to flirt professionally then I do expect you to know that if a woman suddenly stops making eye contact or even looking in your general direction after you address her as "my dove", that is not your cue to ramp up the flirting and the leaning and the hip-shot lingering and the amount of emotion you put into urging her to enjooooy her dinner.

Okay, first I have to tell you this story because it so perfectly epitomizes why I continually fail at making friends.

I was just at the library. There was a guy sitting just outside with two dogs, shepherd mixes, presumably waiting for a companion inside. Dogs and person looked approachable, so I approached, asking, "Can I say hi to your dogs?"

He said sure. While I was petting one dog, the other stuck his head inside my bookbag (which held chocolate and a bag of parmesan cheese, as well as books). The guy said, "That's the first Stone Lion bag I've seen in years, other than ours." (Fort Collins used to have a really good bookstore, called the Stone Lion, but it went out of business years ago.) I agreed that it was very old.

Then I said, "I think I've seen you walking these guys, across the street from my house?" And I told him where I lived. Which I suppose was a weird thing to say but: two GSD mixes, on pinch collars, one of them maybe GSD/Airedale but definitely some kind of terrier head on that shepherd body; they're recognizable. He agreed that they often walked their dogs there, I mentioned that I had three GSD mixes of my own, and we talked briefly but intensely about dogs, collars, clickers, under what circumstances one felt safe letting them off-lead, the differing difficulties of having young dogs or old ones. He asked, "Yours are all German Shepard mixes?" and I said "Yeah, uh, the young one is actually a German Shepherd/German Shepherd mix, in fact, a white German Shepherd. You've probably seen him at the front window, barking at every dog who walks by."

Then I said it was nice to meet him and told him my name, and he told me his (Paul). So, this is great, right? These people love dogs, and love books, and like to walk, and there's a lot of potential for friend-making there. Except. I wouldn't recognize him without the dogs.

Fear makes you stupid, you know? Or I mean it takes up enough of your processors that there's not much left over for learning. I'm so much less shy than I used to be, but still, face-to-face conversation with a stranger means a large portion of my brain will be occupied by FEAR and another large portion by TOLERATING THE FEAR and most of the rest will be busy with "Make eye contact. Maintain eye contact for normal-seeming amount of time. Do not stare. Do not start wondering which eye you should be looking at. Do not switch from eye to eye. Do not give up and make fake eye contact with some other part of their face. Coordinate eye contact with conversational turns. Is it your turn to talk? Do not leave too much of a gap. Do not blurt out something idiotic." And there's not much left over for, you know, seeing the person you're talking to. White male. My generation. Not fat or thin. I think he had a beard. And glasses. That's all I got.