Hi, Not So Nice To Meet You!

I recently enjoyed a couple of weeks at a vacation resort. Although I had come primarily for health reasons, and socializing was really not on my mind at all, I met a number of really nice people, all from the U.K., and spent many pleasant hours in their company.

One person with whom I struck a very nice friendship was a woman who was originally from Jamaica. A nurse, when she told me that she was in her 50's, I was quite shocked, because based on the appearance of her face, I had judged her to be approximately 20 years younger than that. We were very sympatico, and had some really meaningful conversations.

One of the things which I really like about my friendship with her is how we met. One day, I walked into the dining room of the resort for lunch. A young man I had met a few days prior was sitting with two young women. He waved me over to join them, and introduced me to the two ladies. After a minute or two, he and the other woman left, leaving Miss Jamaica and me alone at the table.

Now of course, what would be the expected next step? Naturally, that the two of us would ask each other all kinds of banal questions, the kinds of questions one asks of a newly met person:

How long have you been here?
How many more days will you be here?
How was your flight?
What activities have you been doing here?
What do you do for a living?
How many children do you have?
What is your cat's favorite brand of cat food?

But no. Instead, for the next several minutes, this woman and I sat in complete stone silence. I somehow sensed that she was uncomfortable in my presence, and so I did not wish to engage in any artificial act of filling the air with words designed solely for the purpose of masking the uncomfortable silence. Been there, done that. And I knew that the other two compadres would be returning very shortly, thus relieving the pressure of the two of us maintaining a conversation.

And sho' 'nuff, when our two other friends returned, the conversation resumed with gusto, and gradually, the ice broke between this woman and I. (Ha! Just kidding! Yes, yes, it's "this woman and me"!)

The next day, I told her that I really enjoyed the fact that our friendship began with that totally awkward 5 minutes of silence. I liked the fact that we had both chosen to flout the rules of etiquette and decided that a few minutes of social discomfort was not the end of the world, and that we could survive it. There was something so refreshingly honest about it, as if we had both said to each other:

Yes, I realize that I'm sitting with you and we're not saying one word to each other, because neither one of us really feels that comfortable with the other, and this is a major faux pas, but so what?

She, in turn, told me that her reason for maintaining the silence was much the same as my own, and that my sense that she was not comfortable in my presence was correct: I was feeling under the weather that day, and the concern apparently showed very much on my face.

So I learned a very valuable lesson that day: there is indeed life after social awkwardness.