Slippery-slope...

I am not a big fan of hanging around the playground...I do it for the kids. Very noble, I know. I am envious of mothers who sit and read while their kids play around. After all, the whole point of taking them to the playground is so that they play with other kids or on the equipment, giving you some time to read or stare into space. Without this "get-out" the playground is a brain-crushingly boring hell-hole. Reading, of course, is pretty much impossible with River and his teleporting skills. However, too much time spent at the playground and on-my-own-with-kids has impacted my ability to make conversation.

Playground conversation is often restricted to kids and the home...not scintillating topics at the best of times, and definitely not for hours each day. Recently I found myself talking to another mum (a "working" mum, or mother who works outside the home...however you want to put it). For no reason, other than an automatic need to "playground-babble", I started telling her about how I don't like grocery shopping. But not satisfied with leaving my boring opener at that, I went on to say that because I don't like grocery shopping, I end up not buying enough food and toilet paper etc., and so I have to return the store every day. And then I only get enough food for one dinner and so I have to go back.... Eventually, I trailed-off in mid-sentence because I was too bored to carry on with my pointless drivel. All the while, part of my brain was saying, "There's no point to this aimless rubbish, you are boring yourself and causing some discomfort to this poor woman. Let her alone." And indeed she was so uninterested that she'd stopped even making an effort to appear interested and walked off under the pretence of seeing what her kid wanted. "Oh my God," I thought, "it has happened...I have finally become one of my own pet-peeves; the jabberer of innate and irrelevant nonsense." Next I will walk really slowly (arrrrgh...I do that already! Sometimes I actually stop in the street because I walk so slowly). Okay, next I will neglect to put my left-turn indicator on until I have stopped at the junction, i will start only using lower-case letters or else ONLY USE CAPITAL LETTERS. I will start putting empty containers back in the fridge. When I phone someone I will just say "Hi" and not say who I am. I will blow snot out my nose when I am running....or spit, I will argue with the cashier, when there is a line-up of people behind me, about a tin of baked beans that the flyer said would be on special for $1.00 and they have charged me $1.10. When summer comes I will wear Ugg boots with my shorts in 35 degree temperatures....it's the beginning of a terrible slippery-slope. So I have made a new resolution to keep meaningless small-talk to a minimum. I hope that's a start.