The Picnic Table Phenomenon

I am socially inept.  As a friend once told me, I have no social filter on my mouth.  I'm not nearly as "abrasive" as I used to be ("abrasive" was a former teacher's favorite adjective for me in high school); it seems like time has worn some of my rough edges away.  But I have absolutely no idea how to behave in social situations.  I'm a blurter and sometimes an oversharer and I think I make people uncomfortable because I have a huge laugh that sort of unleashes itself whenever it wants to.  (My brother once found me in a crowded car show by following the sound of my laugh.  I was all the way across the Convention Center and he used it like some sort of mirthful homing beacon.)

(Not really relevant to this story, but a good aside: I'm a great drunk.  I'm a very happy drunk and my natural propensity to talk to people I don't know sort of pushes to the forefront when lubricated with beer.  If you drink with me in cities where we are both visitors, we'll make friends with all sorts of people, sometimes from different countries, before the night is over.  I think it's the Irish in me.  In one single trip to Chicago a couple of years ago, I made friends with homeless people, giant black dudes, two guys from Honduras whom I sort of offensively referred to as Marco and Polo because I never caught their names and a lightbox named Dan.  That is all absolutely true.  And I don't get hung over, so I won't snap at you the next day.  In short, take me to cities around the country and drink with me.  You won't regret it.)

I tell you all of this now so that you'll understand why I'm utterly bewildered by what I refer to as The Picnic Table Phenomenon.  By and large, the weather this semester has been beautiful.  So, in between classes, I can frequently be found at picnic tables.  That's usually where I end up drinking my massive amounts of caffeine and reading romance novels.  That's also where random people end up sitting down (maybe because of a general lack of seating on the CCC campus?) and then, instead of pulling out their own caffeine and romance novel, they inevitably start to talk.

I'm not one to grunt monosyllabic answers and let it go if somebody talks to me first.  Oh no.  If you sit next to me and talk to me first, you'll probably know all sorts of random stories about me by the time you extricate yourself from my loquacious grip, and I'll know far more about you than you intended to tell me. 

I know allll the signs of people trying to uncomfortably get away from my diarrhea of the mouth, so I generally keep a very sharp eye out for them and if I spot one, I let the poor person go.  They didn't know what they were getting into when they spoke to me, so it's not fair to keep them in some sort of polite prison while they listen to the story of how I got my second tattoo and what it means.  By that time, they've started to realize what they've said about themselves and that sort of compounds the uncomfortableness.  I get that.  You may go.

These people, though, don't seem to notice that I'm ridiculous to talk to.  They chatter on happily and listen to my idiotic stories and they laugh.  And then they come back and find me again the next time I'm at that picnic table and we do it again.

This is how I met Spidey the Comic Book Fan, Brian the Handyman, Xavier the Spaniard, Mike the Iraq War Vet, The Tall, Skinny Guy Who Never Said His Name But Jumps Right In To Conversations, The Guy with the Giggly Girlfriend and the Giggly Girlfriend herself.  That's to say nothing of all the nice people I've met somewhere other than the picnic tables.  They have actual names and stuff, and I met most of them in my Business Computing class.

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of why I seem to attract people to random conversation.  I have another inexplicable phenomenon in my life, which I call The College-Age Boy Phenomenon, in which I seem to collect college-age boys who then come to my house and mooch food (hi, Matt and Marcus!).  I have a system of complicated theories about the loyalty of these two guys in my life, but my husband has a single sentence theory:  You have big boobs.  Yes, I do, but I don't think my boobs are why they keep coming over.  I'm old and married, after all.  I think it might be my cooking.

But I'm not cooking for these picnic table people.  They don't care about my boobs.  We talk about things other than school.  And they talked to me first.

It's a mystery.

I'm profoundly glad for it, though, because without them, I would have to lie when my kids ask me "How many friends did you make at school today, Mama?"  I'd then have to make up names and personal details and then keep all that shit straight in my head every week, because those kids are sharp.  So these people are keeping me honest with my kids, while providing me with sometimes stimulating adult conversation and making me feel that while maybe I'm not cool and hip, I'm not a complete loss, either.