I've been noticing lately that, these days, I have a loooot of friends that I don't think I know that much about. I might know some of the general things going on for them, but I don't know many of the little details, like foods they like or what they spend their time doing. Partly because of the pandemic, partly because I’m busy with my family, partly because I haven’t made the effort, and probably because of other things. The few times I have talked to friends over the past year (very few times. Like, embarrassingly few), it's been either catch-up talk (how's work? How's your child? Are you generally happy?) or a really deep conversation about how much we hate COVID. No random chat with coworkers about how much I love the hot fudge sundae poptart I brought to work and then asking what their favorite poptart flavor is. No sitting in church next to someone and bonding over how we both love Sweet Pea lotion. That’s one aspect of why the year has been so hard. I LOVE small talk. I kind of thrive in it, actually. It's how I make friends/deepen already existing friendships/appreciate the little things in life.
When I was a receptionist at BYU Broadcasting, I did random surveys all the time when employees would walk by my desk. My favorite was the poll I took of how many people get belly button lint (the results were shocking. Most men did, most women didn't! Weird). It wasn’t even that I was trying to come up with the craziest questions, I’d just ask people what I happened to be thinking about already. Unprofessional I know, but I made soooo many friends that way. Literally, not one person didn't answer because, even though they all thought I was a weirdo, they were curious about the results... 😏People I just exchanged ‘hello’s with every time they walked by suddenly started stopping to chat. I need to come up with a way to add this into my life again.
We think it’ll be awkward to start asking those questions once we've known someone long enough that we ‘should’ already know all of those things (not necessarily the belly button lint one) and I guess everyone is different so maybe some people do think it's weird. But when someone asks me a question to get to know me better/to start up an interesting conversation, I feel seen.
Follow me on Instagram @kellieddington (it won’t let me change it to my married name for some reason...) if you want to participate in some fun polls!
LOVIES,
Kelli
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