On Relativity – A Review
Hello. It is me. I am alive.
I apologize to all of you who have been refreshing your homepage, which is undoubtably SomethingSorensen.com/Blog, in hopes of catching my blog at its usual time. But! Better late than never, as uh… some people say.
I’m here! In New York! Queens to be exact. Well. Brooklyn kind of. I’m on the border, so who’s to say? I think, as an outsider, it is my right to here and now declare myself as a dual citizen of both boroughs.
My uber driver had it right when he said this city was fast. He was vigilant on watching the crosswalk, the sidestreets, the alleys, and his phone as he drove me from WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE ONLY TARGET WITHIN MILES to my apartment. I had purchased a bookshelf. While we were on our way back he was chatty, and I had, what amounts to, my first real in person conversation since landing here.
Three days where I didn’t get much past “how-are-you,” before people were quickly bustling off to do something somewhere else. It’s ironic really, because then on the subway they just sit there quietly, doing nothing, talking to no one, except for their polite no-thank-you to the man walking between cars selling Nature Valley bars.
And it’s on that hill, that I’d like to die today. You see, I am easy-going, for the most part, but I’m also easily annoyed. It’s a strange way to exist, let me tell you.
One of the things that annoys me to no end is the prospect of a selfish story. One told for bragging-rights, or some sort of self -made-up merit badge. There’s all sorts of them, there’s the “weird dream” conversation, the “I only had 3 hours of sleep last night” talk, and there’s the “I once saw a weird person do weird things on the subway” dialogue. BUT all of these conversations exist in a self-serving bubble.
Everyone has weird dreams; everyone has bad nights, me? I have them exclusively; and everyone has that “strange public transit” story. Talking about them gets a conversation nowhere, how do you respond to them? How do they relate to anything? WELL. That brings me to my next point, the 1-Up.
No, I’m not talking about what happens if you collect 100 coins in any video game. One upping is, as you’re probably aware, the process of telling a story in response to a story because yours is A) “crazier” B) more interesting C) vaguely related, but longer. These stories suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck the life out of me. I just can’t handle them, I don’t know why. They just irritate me to no end!
BUT EVERYONE DOES IT, EVEN ME. SO WHY AM I LIKE THIS? Well. It’s about relatability, right. It’s an interest in sharing what interests them. So that’s why people do it. And since I care about most of the people I’m talking to, I should be completely fine with giving their interest the time of day, after all, I would want the same for me, right?
I don’t know. I really don’t have an answer here. Because if I’m boring someone, I’d rather them tell me. Or if I am undermining their story, then I should stop. Which is why I felt justified when my eyes instantly glazed over when my uber driver started going through his rolodex of “crazy subway stories.”
Today alone, I saw a turtle on the subway. He was in a big Tupperware box with water in it. There were two airholes on top. The man who owned the turtle was wearing two belts. He seemed pretty chill. There was a homeless man who was speaking in tongues on the next train I got on. His eyes actually rolled back in his head. It was terrifying. A fellow-riding buddy asked me if we should call the police and I said probably not, because he had calmed down already.
This was just today.
Am I alone in thinking that this sort of… social circle is annoying? Because I bet I do it. I’m sure there have been conversations I had in the past week that people thought were annoying.
Oh well.
I never hold it against anybody. And like, genuinely, I tend to care about the people enough to listen to their stories and respond with my usual level of candid, but clever quips. But for whatever reason, when it happens to me out of the blue it just wears me out.
Great. Now you all know one of my biggest pet peeves. I’m sure that won’t come bite me in the future.
Thanks for reading. Sorry for the grouchy blog today, I’m just exhausted.
