Boring people should be seen and not heard

I went to a picnic with friends today. A particular kind of friend – the kind who brought along a spare pair of wings for Louisette to wear on the castle playground at Canberra’s Commonwealth Park. Which is to say, the cool kind of friend. The peculiar kind. [Found out later that the wings are for sale here.]

Normally I’d say peculiar is the kind of person I am, not to mention the kind that I like. Which is why I made the effort to push past my leaving-the-house panic and my I’m-too-fat-to-be-seen-in-public panic, and I got there – counting on my friends to pull me out of my fear into a nice day.

The first two minutes went great. I knew a lot of the people there, I wasn’t the only one in a corset, and everyone was sharing finger food that Louisette likes (so her boring old sandwich never had to emerge from our bag to be rejected and/or smeared on her new dress).

But within five minutes of ordinary conversation I was told to switch conversation topics. Immediately. For everyone’s sake. I asked if I was allowed to finish the sentence – the punchline – and was told no.

I don’t get to talk to adults very much – other than CJ after his long day of talking to adults too much – and most of what goes through my head is stuff to do with children or writing, both of which are seriously dull to most of the world. CJ and I watch a lot of TV – mostly fantasy/action with a bit of comedy satire. My third conversation topic is TV, which can backfire badly if your friends don’t watch all the same TV programs in the same sequence at the same time. But I’m up to date with certain bits of the news.

Before I was cut off, I was talking about a couple of genuinely absurd moments in politics lately – one in New York, and the second in Australia. Namely, that a mayoral candidate in NY was known as the kitten-hating candidate after saying it was stupid to have stopped trains for two hours to protect a pair of stray kittens; and that our new PM Tony Abbott (infamous for his awkwardness around any woman) has appointed himself minister for women’s affairs.

I won’t get into grading my own conversational skills, because I know they’re below par, but I wasn’t doing any harm and didn’t deserve to be told to shut up.

I’m glad I made the effort to leave the house, because I try to go to Floriade (or more specifically, just outside Floriade) each year, especially since Louisette was born. I’ll remind myself in future that peculiarity and rudeness can often go hand in hand.

I can’t remember if I mentioned here yet that my Mirena is gone and I’m improving rapidly (I’m back at work, for one thing). All the side effects (hopefully including the balance issues that caused me to almost fall and crush another friend’s small child today – poor guy had to actually catch me before dealing with his upset child) should be a memory in a few more weeks.