The water cooler
Every so often, I try to work on my social skills. Today, I decided to strike up a conversation with my coworker. She is planning her wedding, so that seemed like a good opener.
ME: How's the wedding planning going?
COWORKER: Pretty good. But everyone has an opinion. Like, we're trying to go with a French Bistro theme, but my in-laws keep saying "Everyone likes cocktail weenies."
ME: Yeah, everyone's got to throw in their two cents. Like when Ted Williams died.
CW: [puzzled silence]
ME: You know how, when he died his family started arguing about whether they were going to cryogenically freeze all of him or...[at this point I realize the conversation has gone way off-track, but it's too late]...just his head, or cremate his entire body. And the Boston Metro ran this man-on-the-street feature, where they asked people "Should they cryogenically preserve or cremate Ted Williams?" And one guy said "I think they should bury him at Fenway Park."
CW: Oh.
ME: It's like, everybody's got an opinion, whether it's appropriate or not....
What do you do? At this point I'm guessing you're a Fox News contributor.
Posted by: david | September 29, 2004 at 12:56 AM
Well, talking about Ted Williams would certainly make you my friend for life. Whether this is encouraging or not is debatable...
Posted by: Scott | September 29, 2004 at 01:40 AM
Scott, I am very much encouraged.
I'm a freelance medical writer/advertising copywriter. I like to say that my blog is indirectly supported by advertising.
Mostly I'm working on my philosophy PhD applications.
Posted by: Lindsay Beyerstein | September 29, 2004 at 08:12 AM
You can strike up a conversation around my watercooler anytime -- in my parts, that discussion might prompt us to go find a liquid N2 dewar and a dead cat to do a simulation.
But I can see where it might get you funny looks in other places.
Posted by: PZ Myers | September 29, 2004 at 09:05 AM
Thank goodness neither of you figured out how to bring the conversation from Ted Williams and cryogenics back to cocktail weenies.
Posted by: Swopa | September 29, 2004 at 10:58 AM
Lesson: People who name their blogs after obscur characters from Hitchhiker's actually do not have much in common with normal people.
Full disclosure: I made up this pseudonym for a college D&D campaign. I think discussing cryogenics is cool.
Posted by: Decnavda | September 29, 2004 at 12:53 PM
When Ted Williams died, I was in one of those "perspectives" with pictures and quotes in the "Berkshire Eagle" in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I said "They should cremate him and use the ashes in the making of a bat - a super bat!" The next day they only printed me saying, "They should cremate him," showing some sort of bias... I think...
Posted by: dstein | September 29, 2004 at 10:42 PM
Hey, I have Asperger's once on a first date I started talking about the death rate in Poland during WWII (about 30%, IIRC),
Posted by: zizka | September 30, 2004 at 12:21 AM
At what rate do you think people are being cryo-frozen anyway? I mean.. i never read about it.. there was Walt Disney..almost Ted Williams and then?
Posted by: bicyclemark | September 30, 2004 at 01:29 PM