Why would you not, you ask? Before we had dogs my idea of a social interaction in the park would be something along the lines of, 1. Pass person (if they can’t be avoided), 2. Put head down, avoid eye contact. 3. Look at ground and 4. Grimace (you certainly couldn’t call it a smile, 5. Walk on. Job done. Just like in the image above. Mrs Summerhouse on the other hand would say good morning to any old stranger, despite my forbidding her to speak to other humans.
That changed a bit for me with the arrival of the dogs. There might even be a conversation. Nothing fancy you understand, but something along the lines of, sorry my dog just chased your dog into the next county or yes, they are lovely, brother and sister you know, yes, same litter, yes, remarkable they look so different and temperamentally different as well. And on, and on. Tedious but comes with the territory for good or bad.
Now this bloody virus has both changed the interaction in the sense of making it more certain to happen but changed the tone into, thank you for stepping off the path to let us by. On some occasions I’ve even been known to make actual eye contact to make the ‘thank you’, seem more sincere.
Either way I’d still rather avoid people than speak to them. And yet this very morning we actually had conversations with 4 of the people we regularly see walking their dog/s in the park (the travellers having left). Not like the image above. So this retirement blog is about this morning’s walk.
When it was all over I mused on the variety of these interactions. One thing they didn’t include was conversation about our dogs. The first one was with our architect, dog-walking chum (I put it like this to make it clear that he is not a chum other than in the context of this early morning, dog-walking business). He rides round the park on his electric scooter with his coffee in one hand and the other on the handle-bars if that’s what they’re still called. Dog running around him like a lunatic). He is one cool dude and sure enough the topic of conversation was entirely consistent with this cool persona.
He told us he had just bought a new car and we had to guess what it was. I pointed out that as the owners of a 10 year Kia Piccanto, a ten year old Land Rover Defender and a 15 year old Vauxhall van, we weren’t exactly hip to the latest models. So he told us, he’d bought a new electric, eco-friendly Porsche. Wow, I said or words to that effect. Thinking I was interested he proceeded to tell me about how he ordered the next one for a year’s time as it made good business sense. Lost me, mate. He glided off with the dog in pursuit.
Next was our pal who was having treatment for his lymphoma. My spleen has gone, he said. I don’t know where it’s gone but I’m glad it has because I can breathe now. We were pleasantly surprised to see him. We always used to see him walking his two dogs in the morning but hadn’t for several weeks because he’d been feeling so ill and weak. He was wearing a mask, we didn’t share our views of people wearing masks outdoors.
We were joined by another dog-walking acquaintance who works part-time for Waitrose. She made the mistake of asking whether there was anything we wanted (us not shopping still even though Mrs Summerhouse went to the garage wearing her home-made mask this week). Mrs SH ordered Hoisin sauce for the Peking duck (the chicken and plum sauce version we had last week, didn’t work at all). And I ordered a lobster tail. They cost and arm and a leg, she said. I said that was OK because I only wanted the tail. The joke passed her by. But at least I’d done my bit social interaction (at a distance of course).
Finally, the man I didn’t want to see, not yet a while anyway. Yesterday we had a longish conversation about this and that and I said I don’t want to talk about football. As well as being a lawyer for dental practices this is not his most undesirable trait, he’s also a Leeds United supporter. The team that has just been promoted to the premiership. I said I didn’t want to talk about football because my team, Nottingham Forest had spectacularly failed in the championship play-offs. Red rag to the bull of course. He talked and talked, and his sympathy was infinitely worse than any mickey-taking might have been.
So this day I pretty much ignored him and walked on. Funny how all my old anti-social habits come back. They’re not dead merely sleeping waiting (like The Kraken*) to awake and take me right back to my true comfort zone.
So I got home and thought, well, that was an interesting morning social interaction-wise. Topics of conversation – electric, eco-friendly, very expensive Porsches; hospital treatment for lymphoma and the disappearing spleen; Hoisin sauce and lobster tails from Waitrose and finally a non-conversation, left-over grudge, from the day before to do with football.
I suppose if retired, dog-owning people, have to have conversations in the park, then this kind of variety of topics make it all bearable (apart from the football of course). And not a dog mentioned for the whole of the hour the walk took.
*From the book (and film) The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
Thankyou for sharing what you term your “anti-social” ways previous to the dogs. I suspect many people are similar, as indeed I am, but find ourselves forced into false socialising by the assumption that we all want to mingle with strangers. I used to very much enjoy the train trip to Perth and Sydney on The Indian Pacific from Adelaide, until they employed an American sales manage who enforced socialising by including off-train social events in the price; with the result there is now only one journey each way a week, where there used to be six and needed to be booked 12 months ahead to get a place.
I think the common observation that as we age we find it harder to make and keep friends, is more that as we age we no longer think we have to accept all-comers as friends, and we become more choosy. A topic for a future post?
I’ve been thinking on your last post about Maslov’s hierarchy, which I learned in to ’60s. Back then I did a Myers Briggs test, and just recently did it again, to get the same ISTJ result; which may explain what you called your “anti-social” personality, with which I of course identify, so consider ti the way to be!
Thanks Peter.
It’s almost spooky that you mention the Indian Pacific in this context. We only did the journey once, from Perth to Sidney. I asked the attendant if we could be seated separate from others and for the first night that happened. Then on the next night he insisted we become sociable and seated us with another couple. He was English and half way through dinner I choked on my red wine and spat it all over his white suit. He was quite surprised, as was I because I hadn’t done it on purpose but I thought that will bleedin well teach you to force us to socialise. Laugh, I nearly got off the train. Weird though you mentioning it.