One Angry Monkey

I must admit, and this is a big one for me because I have difficulty admitting a failure to understand anything, I am completely mystified about human social behavior. Not all of it, some is blindingly obvious. There are some stumbling blocks though. For example, why in the nine circles of Dante’s Hell do people talk to me?

I’m not by nature a chatty person (believe it or not). Unlike my mother and the siblings from that side, I don’t strike up conversations with complete strangers. There’s a reason for that. I don’t like people. Oh, I might like the odd person here and there, but people as a whole? Forget it.

My mother, on the other hand, had the time of her life while I was in hospital. She’d flirt with men in the lift, chat with inmates of the psyche ward as they sat outside smoking, listen as doctors reveal test results one normally wouldn’t in front of one’s patient’s mother… For someone visiting their youngest daughter in hospital she was really in her element.

My sister and both Howling Winds from Above and Sulfurous Winds from Below are the same. And somehow they manage to avoid the creepy crazies. Perhaps they’re using the relatively normal as a shield. Attack is, after all, the best defense. But I get all of the prize winners. Like the guy with the thick Eastern European accent who approached me as I walked home from the post office one day not long after Brendan and I first moved here. He asked me how I was. I replied fine. I returned the courtesy. He said he was lonely. I refrained from replying “Clearly.” Or “I couldn’t imagine why.” Ill-advisedly I said instead, “That’s a shame.” Somehow that was the opening he was waiting for. “Will you have sex with me?” Uh, no. Thanks all the same.

Then there was creepy bus guy who hangs around Paradise Interchange here in Adelaide. Or at least he used to. I haven’t been there in quite some time. He may have moved on. Wherever he is, I doubt that he’s stopped trying to strike up conversations with young, female bus passengers. Conversations which he would “deftly” move into slightly, err, bluer areas.

And some random today at Burnside Village shopping centre of all places. (Quick clarification - Burnside isn’t the kind of place one normally finds swarms of crazy people. Most people in Burnside are as eager as I am to avoid talking to randoms.) I don’t even know what he wanted to say. Just kept walking. A great trick which only works when you’re not waiting for a bus.

I get that some people are a little depraved. Or a lot. I get that some people get their jollies by going up to people in the street and striking up inappropriate conversations. I get that it’s like crack for minor sexual deviants. I do.

What I don’t get is what about the music blasting from the earphones connecting my iPod to my ears attracts these people.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.