Awkard silence...

Good evening my blog offspring; my bloffspring (YES! I love it, good woosion [word fusion]). Every time that I blog I seem to apologise for my absense because I have not posted in far too long, and let me apologise yet again for I have once again been too busy or unimaginative to post anything for quite a while.

The other day I found myself serving two customers (I am a check out chick, or laser babe as I prefer to be called, at Safeway) who were the parents of a girl my sister went to primary school with. Now I have a good memory of St. Luke's parental faces, but I have to admit (oh dear God no!) that I can't remember names that match the faces of parents of people that weren't even my friends (you monster!) and I am usually unable to do a quick parent-child matchup on facial recognition of 2 people at Safeway (how do you live with yourself?!); especially at the butt end of a 7 hour shift. This situation happens often because the school is just around the corner and as such many of the families would use our humble little supermarket for their weekly groceries, and usually I get the "I recognise you but I don't know where from so I'm not going to say anything because I probably only know you from shopping here so often and you just must always be in here when I am because you have nothing better to do with your life than work 34 hours (this week... I am going to be rich) and saying anything will result in an awkward situation" look. I love this look; it is the look of safety for me because it means I can go about my business with my fake work-smile and then politely say "have you got an everyday rewards card?" and then shove them to the side and serve the next customer. At other times I know ther customer very well, I enjoy a nice chat while serving them, and then they are off on their merry way. This time, however, I found myself in a less common but still far too common situation; the semi-strangers spoke to me. With one or two items, this is ok, but these people had an entire trolley full of groceries for me to scan. The woman said hello and asked me how year 12 was going (how dare these people with whom I am very close not remember that I have already finished secondary school and have already started uni), at this point I still had no idea who this couple was. The man looked confused until the woman said to him "oh that's Roxy's sister" in a way that made it seem like it should be obvious; it was not obvious to me and clearly not obvious to the man that we had ever met before. So now my perimeter of who it could be was narrowed down to the parents of my sister's friends, but she has quite a few of those; I decided that I shouldn't persue the issue further. We then enetered 5 agonising minutes of awkward post-mini-conversation silence that made me feel stupid when I asked for an everyday rewards card, even though I get in trouble if I don't ask for it. ANYWAY, the point of this ever so long introduction (yes that was just the introduction) is that I decided to think up a list of GREAT things to say during an awkward silence... and here are some of them (great intoclusion... conclusion to the introduction).

"The other day I got a pizza from the place across the road and there was a curly black hair in it... I hope it was a chest hair."
Bringing up gross things that make local businesses look bad is always a great idea. Who doesn't want to hear about something that may make them throw up just when they are planning dinner. Good move kid.

"My mum likes Skyhooks."
Hmm... I bet she does... your mother's musical taste is very important to me.

"It's a shame to be inside when it is so nice out there."
Classic weather small talk is always interesting, especially when every answer is the same. Who needs variety anyway?

"I am so tired!"
I have to admit that I use this one all the time. Any time that there is a short silence in any conversation I draw attention to how tired I am; it is rarely a lie but usually unneccessary to mention. It does, however, bring up conversation about all the stuff you do instead of sleeping. Actually not sarcastic on this one, unlike the other ones :).

"I was writing for my blog the other day..."
Everyone cares about what you have to say. You should let them know that they can access your opinions whenever you are not around by simply clicking onto the internet. Lucky them.

"So did you see that *insert sporting event or news story* the other day? Wild huh?"
People like sports, and if they don't like sports, they like news. Most people will be horribly shocked by the 13 year old boy who got dumped by his girlfriend so he killed all her family, drained their blood into a bathtub and then drowned her in it when she got home; it's a general agreement that such actions are frowned upon so this is definitely something that can ignite passionate conversation.

"So... how about Collingwood hey? They suck and their supporters have no teeth."
About 20% of AFL supporters are behind the mighty Pies, my mother included. As a Saints supporter her recent victory makes me want to throw up. The other 80% of AFL supprters are behind a different team... and also whoever is playing against the Pies. It is the sad truth for Collingwood supporters, but hey, I had to deal with 'rapist' comments about my players for way too long for me to feel sympathy towards them. I'm sure that the majority of Pies supporters have their own cars and their own teeth, and I was once a defender of the bullied club, but then they heartlessly demolished us in the grand final replay, and I realised that they are the richest club out of everyone so they don't need to be liked. Also, my mother is an insufferable winner, and a worse loser; I have wanted to punch her in the face so many times this season. Anywho, with this comment you have a 79% chance of the person agreeing with you and adding their own comments, a 19% chance of being abused to the shit by a one eyed Collingwood supporter (for those who don't know I am not saying that they are too poor to afford eye care, it means they don't see any other logic but their own), and a 2% chance of runnng into someone like Shady Lewis who cares not for sport, doesn't even know who Joffa is, and thinks AFL is the most boring thing to happen to Victoria since one convict settler said to the other convict settler: "oh I am ALSO her because I stole a tea cosy from my next door neighrbour".

That's all from me folks, I hope that all of your silences are awkward so that you too can benefit from my list of incredibly interesting things to say in an awkward silence. Please note that any interesting fact that you read off the back of a Libra pad (ladies know what I'm talking about) is also a good thing to mention when you are just rocking backj and forth on your feet and looking blankly at another person. Thanks for reading.
-Renji