After the chicken delivery incident, I gave up the "how to win friends" tactics and returned to my own natural, awkward conversation skills . . . until about a year and a half later.
I was at institute and decided to be a nice person and talk to a boy I had been vaguely acquainted with in high school. I didn't actually 'know' him in high school, but we had been in a class or two together. So, anyway, I decided to practice my conversational question asking skills again, and it was chicken delivery all over again.
I started with, "What's your major?"
"Biology." I majored in English. Biology was actually the very last class I took as an undergraduate. But I guess it could be interesting . . . animals, plants, people, they're all interesting . . .
We continued on to discussion of jobs, and it turned out he worked in a biology lab.
"So," I followed up, "what exactly do you study at the lab?"
"Fungus."
Well, I impressed him with my ability to use the correct plural form, 'fungi,' and found out something about world about stopping world hunger, but really, fungi.
A few weeks later we were on a date.
Our ride-to-the-concert conversation was okay. I found out he knew a south east Asian language and wanted to hear all about it. But on the ride home, I searched for a new topic. None of my questions sparked a good conversation, and all I got were brief responses.
Finally, I asked, "So what do you like to do?"
"Biology."
"No, I mean what do you like to outside of school."
"I study fungi."
"So when you're not doing school, or studying the fungus, or doing anything else related to science, what do you do? Like in your spare time?"
I was expecting him to talk about sports or music or books. Even if it were geeky sci-fi books or some weird Star Trek obsession, I could deal with it. His response, "I like Linux."
Long pause from me.
"Oh, what's Linux?"
"It's an operating system."
"Huh."
Another long pause. I recovered from my dismay and asked, "What do you do with Linux?"
"Well, I like to write code and figure different stuff out with it."
Shoot me now.
And that was the end of our conversation. Pretty much for the rest of the ride home.
The end. The end of us being friends or going on dates. And the end of me trying to win friends and influence people.
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Ha haa haa! My husband is an Information Systems major and likes to play around with Linux! I think it would have bored me out of my skull to talk about it on a date!
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