When Someone Tells You There Is Nothing Wrong but You Know There Is Something Troubling Them

The terminal time I went to America, I stopped in at a café for a coffee. While waiting for my card to become through, the adult female behind the counter smiled and said, "What are your plans for the weekend?"

And I said, "Uh, I dunno."

"The weather is nice, huh?"

"Sure is," I replied.

This is an example of small-scale talk. It's the mouth'southward version of drumming its fingers.

An effort to do small talk in Russian federation

Back in Russia, I met my friend Elena for java.

"Why did you write that if you talk to Russiansthey might want to murder and eat you?" she asked.

"They do! When you endeavour to talk to them with small talk."

"Non true," she said.

"Yeah information technology is, especially with strangers."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes at me.

"Right, so like when yous're in line at the shop, if I were to randomly start talking to you almost something dumb, like if I started telling you well-nigh my 24-hour interval and how much I liked your blouse or the weather."

"No ane would practise that," she said.

I laughed. "Oh, oh yes, in America they do."

She looked at me, suspicious, as though I'd just said, "Y'all know in America, people eat their ain toes with ketchup."

The affair is, the only time a stranger has ever volunteered something random to me on the streets of Russia, it was a nice one-time bullheaded woman who said, "Oh, aren't you a handsome male child" before turning to the air beside my face and saying "...and you also."

What Russians retrieve about pocket-sized talk

I asked a few Russians what they thought about small talk and received responses like:

"I personally hate small-scale talkers - why they are talking to me? Are they really interested in my mood? Can't they find out the weather on the cyberspace? Are they going to ask some favor from me? Simply get away or say what y'all want directly!"

And:

"Russians don't really come across the point of talking about obvious and bland things, it's simply tedious to the states and is not a function of our civilisation."

Some other Russian I spoke to thinks geography influences small talk: "Location ways a lot," he said. "I think that it's all nearly the weather: you merely don't talk much where you only run into snow and darkness for eight months. You tin talk endlessly where the sun is shining all the time and the vino is gratis of charge."

The verdict seemed grim.

Merely I didn't want to only accept people's word for it, so I decided to go out and endeavor out some small talk on Russians. There's a store down the road with a petty café stand up in it where I get my morning java. The shopkeepers know me, when I walk in i will say, "Hello my friend," and the other, "How are y'all?" but clearly doesn't expect a response. And then, while waiting for my coffee I turned to the man behind the counter and said in Russian, "And so, the atmospheric condition today, huh?"

He frowned at me, and so looked over my shoulder at the pissing rain and icy sidewalks of Petrograd in Spring and said:

"F*ck the weather "

"Are you talking to me?"

I did this in front of my friend Ivan at a café. The lady behind the counter had just handed me my latte and I said, "It's going to exist a nice weekend, any plans?"

She straight-up ignored me and I turned to find Ivan frowning. "Are y'all talking to me?" he asked.

"No, I was trying to have small-talk, you know, just talk with the barista."

"Only you take a girlfriend?"

"What? Yes, no, only pocket-size talk, you know, talk virtually something completely useless for the sake of engaging in conversation."

He thought about information technology for a flake and then on the walk dorsum to my place he said, "Sometimes I wish at that place was smaller talk, my friends are always talking about such philosophical things." And so he added, "But it does happen sometimes, in the shop the other day I virtually forgot to purchase a lighter for my cigarettes and the woman backside the counter told me nearly how all morning she needed a lighter but couldn't discover a working i and she believed she was cursed. Is this common in America?"

I said, "Aye, especially in the south. And very frequently when I'm in shops conversations volition get stuck up about the weather, or the news, or some-such nonsense."

"Perhaps, it'due south so solitary people can hide amend. If you're all talking all of the time, so how would you lot know who is lonely?"

Big talks

If there are Russians who bask small talk, I haven't met them.

On the opposite, Russians similar big and sometimes very personal talk - you might meet a Russian, particularly on the train or in a bar, and within a few hours be as thick as thieves.

I came beyond this in my quest for pocket-size talk in the dingy Pushkin Bar. I was choosing a beer. In that location was only ane other human being in the identify too the bartender and he stood at the counter and watched me. Now, in America, I might turn to the homo and say, "How's it going?" and he would nod, grinning and say something similar, "Neat, groovy, some weather we're having." And I'd say, "Aye."

Just when I turned to this homo, who I later (much later) learnt was named Tim, and said, "How'southward it going?" something very different happened.

V hours later I was sat at the altogether party of Tim's best friend in a identify he referred to every bit "a Soviet bar." I knew that Tim's father had been a general in the military machine and that many people effectually town respected his family for his father's service. I knew that Tim could recite Shakespeare, because he did, and that his mother had left his male parent when he was very young and moved into her ain apartment and that his father had died. I knew that he still lived with his female parent and that surely, she'd beloved me and surely, I was welcome for dinner and to stay the night. Oh, and by the manner, my name is Tim.

The affair is that small talk isn't a mode of talking to someone, information technology's talking at them - there is no depth or purpose to it; it is like an awkward high school trip the light fantastic to the last 30 seconds of a bad song with no rhythm. It is boring, and Russians tend to be anything but ho-hum. After, as I walked along the street with an inebriated Tim, he began telling me most his time in New York City earlier we were stopped by an older woman.

"Mother!" Tim cried.

"This is my mother."

The woman glared at me and so grabbed Tim past his jacket.

"You fool, what are you doing walking around in this cold. And you're drunk!!" she cried at him, then wrapped his scarf tighter around his cervix. Tim swayed a bit, earlier breaking loose to become vomit into the snowbank.

I looked at his mother, she at me.

I felt awkward. I said, "So, uh, the conditions, huh?"

She frowned, "F*ck the weather."

Benjamin Davis , an American writer living in Russian federation, explores various topics, from the pointless to the profound, through conversations with Russians. Terminal time he explores what do Russians call up of Trump. Side by side time he will explore gun ownership in Russia. If you accept something to say or desire Benjamin to explore a detail topic, write united states in a comment section below or write u.s.a. on Facebook .

If using whatever of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in total, always provide an active hyperlink to the original textile.

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Source: https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/330182-small-talks-weather-russia