I’ve never been good at small talk. In fact, when I was a little girl, I was the shyest of the shy. At social events, I clung tightly to my dad’s khakis, using the back of his knee as a safe haven when people paid me any mind. I also had a strange affinity towards mannequins in department stores. I admired how tall they stood, and how calm they kept while thousands of customers gawked and stared as they shuffled by. They didn’t have to change expression for anyone, they were content in their own mannequin world. But time passed by, and I grew taller, and figured out that society put an age limit on how old you were allowed to be to hide behind your dad’s knees and that mannequins – well, they weren’t real.
Thinking back, my parent’s first attempt at curing me of my shyness was theatre. They put me in the public school’s summer theatre program every year for six years, starting around the age of seven. It was Monday through Friday, 9 – 3, in an old stuffy theatre with close to a hundred kids. My parents said then that it was a chance to make new friends – now, I figure it was a chance for my parents to relax, while I sat all day in a close-to-free daycare. I ate turkey and cheese sandwiches around noon every day, the cheese involuntarily melted to its plastic bag home. I developed my first real crushes on boys there, learned how to dance and sing in tune, and even how to apply my own lipstick.
The man in charge was named Barry, a black man with thin dreads and sparkling white teeth. He could dance circles around anyone I knew at the time, his voice to this day, more powerful than any I’ve heard. He wore white t-shirts and ripped light colored jeans and looked so cool doing it, but then again, he could have been wearing anything and I’d still would have thought he was the coolest man in the room. It was Barry who saw the pearl closed inside of its tight, colorless shell. It was Barry who tried to open me up. He taught me how to throw my voice, he taught me how I should walk into a room. For those six hours, I could be anyone I wanted to be and no one could change that. But it was up to me to keep it up after I went home.
It wasn’t until the end of middle school, that I decided to show my classmates the person I was, and decided to try and “fit in”. After six years in theatre, I sat with the cool kids at lunch. This lasted for maybe, two years. As sex, drugs, and alcohol became a part of our daily vocabulary, I found myself not wanting to be a part of that scene. My voice at parties didn’t sound like my own, my smiles at lunch felt forced. At the age of sixteen, I ducked back into the comfort that was my tight, colorless shell. I became quiet in any of my classes that were non-art related, and found myself an artsy boyfriend who was equally as shy, who shared with me a hatred for small talk and really any form of common eye contact. The relationship at the time was quiet, warm, and comfortable, but like most things had to end, and fizzled out approximately four years later.
After this, I was awkwardly approaching my womanhood, with an unsteady knock at its door. I moved to new cities and was forced to be social again. Men tried to pursue me, I was beyond naive. It took me close to a year to look everyone in the face at my job, and now, after almost three, I’ve added a smile to the daily routine. It was there, that nearly two years ago, I grew a liking to a polite, attractive grown man. A man that wasn’t afraid to look people in the eye. A man I could leave downstairs in a room with my parents or old friends, and hear his voice booming through the hardwood floors. This man has tried his best to be the “Barry” of this decade, this man has tried his best at bringing me to show the rest of the world who I am.
Today, I babysat. At 4 p.m. I stood in an elevator at the book store, clenched tightly to the little girl’s three year old fingers. The elevator made an unexpected stop at the second level. Its doors opened up, a woman with a stroller climbed on. She smiled at me and gracefully said “hi”. All at once, all these thoughts came into my head – I could smile, hold tightly to Olivia’s fingers and then gaze at the floor numbers above me, I could say “hi” but will I sound stupid for just repeating what she had just said? Or I could quickly come up with some form of small talk that would surely comfort this woman’s ears and mind, and help her move smoothly into the next part of her day.
“Sure is cold, huh”, I muttered as I tightened my jacket, smiling as I gazed at the numbers above me.
