Candor

I was home-schooled from 1st grade to 7th grade, and in that time period my family was either traveling or living in places that didn’t have that many neighbors close by. So the only way I learned how friends interact with each other was through watching my parents interact with the people they met.

And in every situation, it seemed like my parents were the nicest, friendliest people of all time. I mean, they would just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk with these people about pretty much anything for hours on end, with neither them nor their friends showing any signs of weariness, boredom or lack of topics of conversation. Friendship, therefore, meant someone with whom you could talk freely and openly for as long as desired with neither party getting bored or running out of things to talk about.

Well, I rarely have that, if ever. My conversations with people usually consist of “Hi”, “How are you?” and then awkward silence until I realize that they never really wanted to talk to me in the first place and I leave. In most cases, I’m surrounded by people with no common interests, not even a few, so there’s even less to try to talk about.