what people say
I often wonder what other couples talk about when they are alone. Seppo and I have a lot of car conversations, as we carpool to work together nearly everyday. We discuss random things such as:
- If one of our straight friends came out, who would you be the most surprised about? The least surprised about?
- What is the first frivolous thing you would buy if you won the lottery?
- If you were to mix-and-match all of our friends into different couples, who would you match up?
- If you were to start up a band, who among our friends would you put in the band?
- Who do you think looks the oldest of our friends? The youngest?
- Who of our friends would you trust the most in a survival situation?
- How many cars in the Bay Area do you think have both a Bush/Cheney ’04 bumpersticker AND a rainbow one?
- Do you think there is a higher probability of people dying on or near their birthdays than on a random other day (not counting major holidays)?
- What will the new wave of energy production be in the future?
- What are the most interesting uses of flexible display technology?
- If you were to make a movie and you wanted someone to provide the score for it, who would it be?
- What do you think explains our respective self-esteem levels when we were going up?
- If you were to mix-and-match our friends into other friends’ bodies, who would you put in whose body and why?
We do a lot of these. I think this started back when we were doing the long-distance thing while I was in Boston and he was in LA, then we continued it when he was in Oakland and I was in San Jose. It’s fun, provides a lot of insight into the other person’s mindset, and makes sure that phone conversations are not stilted and boring, which is one of the worst thing that can happen to a long-distance relationship, not to mention the easiest. These conversations, which often seem random and irrelavant to real life, often lead into interesting discussions about things that affect us in a practical level.
I often overhear other couples talking at restaurants and think to myself how I would have to throttle someone if I had to have conversation as inane as they did.
We ask these questions to each other all the time.
There’s a scene from Eternal Sunshine … where they comment on the dead conversations that people have while out eating together. I hope that we never reach that point (so far so good) because I can’t imagine sitting down for a simple meal and having nothing to say.
And trying to make small talk to cover it up! I hate small talk with strangers; I imagine it will be unimagineably worse with someone I love.
When Chad and I are at a restaurant or bar I always look around at the other couples and see what their conversations are like. The saddest thing is when I see a couple who do not talk at all or worse the couples where each person brought a newspaper and have their noses stuck in them. Fortunately for us, we never have a shortage of conversation. A couple weeks ago we spent an entire dinner deliberating over the plot and our predictions for Harry Potter. We’re so cool! 😉
The ole’ hypothetical and curious questions. I enjoy thinking about questions like these, but any time I ask my friends, they give me that “what in the world are you talking about” look.
When I was washing my face the other morning, I was thinking that when you light a candle, the scent usually travels to one or two rooms. How is it that sharks can smell blood in the water from miles away? Does blood really diffuse that fast in water? Hmm…
– Mike