We just returned from karate class and now the kids are eating lunch and then it's off to the pool. I love that in the summer the karate school offers morning classes so you don't end up sitting in the dojo when you should be home making dinner. We knock it out first thing and then get on with our day. Also, the classes are a lot less crowded which is better for the kids and nicer for me because I don't end up sitting shoulder to shoulder with that man who yells at his son the whole time or that other woman who smells strongly of alcohol at 4:00pm every afternoon.
This morning, I sat down in the folding chair next to a newspaper that someone had abandoned and started to read about how FanFair is cool with the locals again now that they moved it downtown and started calling it the "CMA Music Festival."
A man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could read the sports section. I told him the paper had been left behind and that he was free to share it, which was my first mistake because he sat down next to me to read it.
I finished scanning the paper like I usually do and placed it on the floor where he could reach it. That was when he leaned over and said, "Can I ask you a question?" In Tennessee, this is the point where your new friend usually says, "Have you found a church home?" but since this guy and his kid were new to the intermediate level class, I really expected a karate question.
What I didn't expect was, "Have you decided who you're going to vote for this fall?" I stuttered and said I didn't know, taken aback by his forwardness and he jumped right in to noticing I was wearing a t-shirt with a "Shell" gas station logo and did I want another George Bush and another four years of horrible gas prices? I mentioned to him that I only bought the shirt because my name is Shelley and I thought it was funny, but he didn't care and he went on for several minutes about Bush and Obama and Clinton and McCain. I just nodded my head and smiled and said vague things like, "Yeah, that is really something."
The guy mentioned several times that he was a stay-at-home-Dad. He had two little girls with him under the age of five while his son was in karate class. He wore a bluetooth headset in his ear the whole time, but I never saw him use it. I figured he was probably starved for some adult conversation, or maybe he wanted to be able to go home and say, "I had the most scintillating political discussion during Junior's karate class today!" I want that, too. Choosing not to work for pay is hard on your ego in a society that defines you by what you "do." It must be even harder for a man, especially in the south. You want to imagine that your life isn't only full of Pokemon and potty training even though it mostly is. Perhaps he just thought it was inappropriate to be wearing a gas station t-shirt during these troubled times, no matter what your name is.
I tried to steer the subject away from the election specifically and into the price of gas or what I'd just seen in the paper about the housing market in Tennessee, but my initial "I don't know" had left me open to a lecture from him about how I should really be paying attention to politics. Eventually his two-year-old called him away and I picked up a magazine grateful to immerse myself in "Who wore it best." It's not that I don't have thoughts about the election. I just don't want to discuss them in public with a total stranger while trying not to disrupt karate class. I thought politics and religion were still off limits in polite conversation. You don't just accost someone you don't know and ask them who they're voting for. This is a subject I even tiptoe around with some of my friends, usually because we have an understanding that we disagree.
This guy either needs to find an Internet chat room to discuss politics or seriously work on his small talk.
I hate when people do that. Don't they realize that while they may be starved for intellectualism, most of us just want some time during our kids' classes to zone out and not have to listen to someone?
Hmmm...I think I'll try his strategy for small talk at Justin's karate class next week. I think it will work even better in here than in TN. Just a thought.
Oh, and I'm loving the Shell tee. I actually chuckled reading that.
Posted by: Alisa | June 07, 2008 at 09:48 PM