A turn too small. in The Napkin.

So last night, Erik and his sister were trading stories about how shitty and abusive their parents were. I really didn’t have anything to contribute. (Reminds me of how I used to feel like I “couldn’t” be depressed or feel bad, because I didn’t have anything traumatic happen in my childhood.)

I said something to the effect of, “It’s not that I don’t have stories, it’s just summing them up would kind of miss the point.” And that’s why, I feel a lot, that I don’t have anything neat and compact to share. Jesse was sharing how her mom would yell at her, make her cry, then yell at her for crying, which would make her cry more. Erik recalls observing this and thinking, “Wow, isn’t it obvious yelling is making her cry more?” (Just one example.)

With these kinds of socializations, there’s a lot of give and take. I wasn’t particularly anxious, I just acknowledge that it’s not the time or place to just babble for five minutes. You have your moment where you express a thought (which hopefully is) related to something someone else said. And then you let your moment go, because it’s someone else’s turn to speak.

Turn-based socialization. There HAS to be an rpg based on this phenomenon.

I dunno. When I get into things, I GET into them. I feel like I need to give a broader context rather than just the punch line. I have very few incidents in my life that can be understood without a greater context. But even then, I feel like I want to explain everything outside of that incident, as to not bias a person’s opinion specifically on that incident.

Perhaps it was just the topic at hand. Under different circumstances, I have no problem saying “Hey, I twice failed all my classes in college” if it’ll make someone feel better.

Or perhaps it says something about me that I’m hesitant to share events which are so OBVIOUSLY one thing, and kind of are, but that I want to project it as part of a greater whole. Food for thought.

Gotta love things said in small moments.