I like conversation, but I can be particular about them. There are a million ways to categorize conversation, but for me recently there are two types of conversation.

The first is two people who are bursting at the seams with things they want to talk about, and the entire conversation has literally no pauses and people almost talk over each other with how much they want to talk with the other person. I don’t mean to suggest that this type of conversation is only people wanting to hear themselves speak and waiting for their turn, completing ignoring the other person. It can be, but I don’t think it’s innate. I think many beautiful conversations happen this way. (This last sentence was edited in on second read, but that should not influence you the reader on me the writer.)

The second, and the one I am biased towards, so I’ll probably paint it in a better light than it deserves, is the conversation with many pauses and many questions. The question/pause conversation. You ask someone how they’re doing, and you let them speak, if they pause, you wait and see if there’s anything else they want to say, you ask a follow up question, and eventually you bring your relatable experience to the conversation and the conversation naturally moves in other directions. The key is the pauses.

So I am a man who likes a pause, who needs a pause, and I find myself in conversation with people who are bubbling at the seams.

I think the bubblers are more fun and natural people. I will not deny that. They’re not playing 4D chess in a conversation, they’re talking with their Goddamn friends (or family). Why should anyone feel the need to have any such structured etiquette when talking to their people, the people who they should be able to truly be themselves around, without any need for guard or pretense. I get it. I do. In some ways I am the phony.

But then again, I don’t. And I’m not.

I will use the example of my new job. When someone asks me how my new job is going, I don’t have a set five minutes of information I want to say about my new job that I bring out when I get the question, I really honestly have “good, but stressful”, and then I need to think about how at that specific moment I am feeling about the new job, and then with the mix of the person listening, and what specific thoughts/feelings they have about it, my feelings are influenced and changed and the conversation goes in that direction. But let me reiterate, there are pauses galore.

I think my pauses can make bubblers uncomfortable, as for a bubbler conversation doesn’t need or shouldn’t have empty spaces in it. For the bubbler, the pause may be seen as rude, as I am forcing them to fill in the conversation, and forcing them to do the majority of the talking and lead the entire conversation! Why so quiet Chrissy??

I like a conversation where one person says “shit’s fucked up eh?” and then there’s a 30 second pause for beer to be drunk, words to be digested, and only then to be followed with an almost absent minded “fucking hell, eh?” I’m trying to say we pausers are not persecuted misunderstood intellectuals. God no. There’s just a need for a slower speed.

So sometimes when I am tired and not on my social game of being the most perfect Chris that I have ever been, I notice I am with a bubbler, and honestly, I can just switch my brain off a little and let them talk. However, then the bubbler asks me questions as they notice they’re talking the most, but then it can be hard to produce a bubbler response.

Please do note however, that I have had great conversations with bubblers, and I have even been a bubbler myself. I have been that excited, and that ambitious to want to ensure I get to put in my bits in the conversation too. I have got them in there, sometimes with force.

To slightly cut away, there’s something more I want to express though, and it probably doesn’t relate specifically to these two types of conversation. I’m not even sure if I believe what I will say, or if this idea is just currently inside me batting around on the walls, waiting to be polished into the diamond or the turd it is.

Conversations are not important. I am not spewing things that will save the world, or that need to be said or else a second Spanish Civil War is gonna happen. Conversations are conversely pleasant things, like tea parties and scones with raspberry jam on them, and a conversation’s pleasantness being preserved is a nice thing. I’m not saying debate is bad, debate is great, but if we are debating American politics, for example auto insurance schemes, how much power the coast guard should really have, or whatever else Americans can’t stop talking about these days, then our conversation is not going to change the discourse of the world. If it’s pleasant, it will allow both parties to fully flesh out how they feel through rigorous discourse, and allow them to better understand how the other feels and why. It’s hard to get into this sort of conversation with pre-packaged statements. If we’re lucky, someone may even change their opinion, feel more empathy, or something else lovely.

And really, I have had conversations, especially in my youth, where I felt like it was the end of the world if I didn’t get whatever point I had inside me across, usually about the Means of Production. So maybe I’m just being old. I’m not sure.

Do you know what I bet would fully flesh out whatever I want to say? A conversation. Over either scones with raspberry jam, or beer, but not both.

Anyways, shit’s fucked eh?