If you spend enough time at this you start to see everyone as a character. Their little quirks and idiosyncrasies become synecdoche. Their rhetorical tropes stop sounding new or interesting. Anecdotes start to feel rehearsed. Legends take on new meanings. Moments become bigger in the rearview mirror. The things you dislike get magnified. What once made you laugh feels stale. The aperture of empathy widens to encompass your entire field of vision. Their facial expressions speak to you in ways they’ll never understand. Everything is reduced into a composite of a person, a memory built on another memory, stripped of relevant context, and rendered in full as a holistic thing in your mind’s eye.
I have a friend I don’t see often. When I do see her it’s usually with a bunch of people that rarely interact with her in person either. It sounds odd, I know. We’re not close friends, but travel in similar circles. We cross paths in circumstances where there are more unknown than known people. Think randomly organized group meals, or large events. Places where chitchat is perfected.
I was with her two different times recently, a couple of weeks apart, and noticed that I heard the same exact stories both times. The circumstances in which they were told were similar: a group of people gathered around a table, chatting about one general interest topic until it’s been exhausted, then turning to the next thing. Sometimes with labored pause in the middle. The kind where everyone looks around and considers what little anecdote would spark up a new round of fresh conversation. My friend is gregarious and talkative by nature. She is the kind of person that leads conversation whenever she’s in a room. She in turn drives everyone else’s conversation and changes topics when necessary and opportune.
Those minor moments are when the conversation swings to her stories. The stories aren’t bad. They are told well and have punchlines that always get laughs. I’ve just heard them all way too many times. I’ve known her for over ten years and most of the stories in the core repertoire happened before I knew her. A few are about moments or events where I was present. That’s how I know they are embellished a little bit, but not too much. Not more than you or I or any reasonable person would embellish if we were leading conversation in that setting. The setup and players are true, if not the stakes or framing. They don’t get grander over time. It’s like they are tried out for small groups and the pieces that get the best reaction stay in the act while the bad stuff gets cut. It’s like a standup comedy act, if a comic developed one long set of material over the course of their entire lifetime and then played the best bits to new audiences. All told I’ve been hearing the same stories once every few months for over ten years. Adding that all up, I have heard the best material over fifty times by now.
I wonder if she knows that she tells the same stories over and over again. I could very well be the problem. Maybe the pace of my interactions with her and the scenarios in which they come about lend themselves to the telling of her best stories and it’s impossible for her to know who has heard them before. In most scenarios I’m probably the only one that’s heard all of the stories before. Though I can’t be sure about that. The reactions are generally positive. Then again, on the other hand, it’s also possible that everyone else has heard everything before and laughs every time to be polite. Sort of what I do, I suppose.
I have other acquaintances and friends that share the need to define themselves for their audience in all their interactions. You don’t just meet them and take whatever they say and do at face value. Instead, you get a constant, but subtle, bombardment of codes and signals that tell you all about the hobbies and ideas they want you to use to understand what drives them. They aren’t just the person you see going about their day, interacting with you, going through the motions. No, they are into something really cool and worthwhile and difficult and artsy and deep. I guess it could seem like showing off or peacocking. I don’t see it that way. It’s more that they have a role in public settings and use a bank of affects and language to give their audience exposition about that role. I don’t think it’s purposeful or driven by any other desire than to be seen as unique or maybe cool. People want to be understood for more than you may see on the surface, though that too can do a lot to influence judgements and is part of the act. It’s also possible that I’m picking up those little hints and signals more than other people. Maybe it’s a sticking point just with me and there is minimal intentionality or repetition involved. It’s not something I mind. It just stands out to me as a defining characteristic, something I can’t help but think about when I interact with them.
Which makes me think how amazing and odd and kind of off-putting people with supreme self-confidence can be. People who don’t care nor have ever given a passing thought to the things they may not know about something, and yet plow into any situation with aplomb. The confidence is a ticket to “fake it until you make it,” or maybe just fake it until their faking is accepted or normalized. I wouldn’t put the people I described above in this category. I raise it as a character type because in many ways it’s so different from myself, and I see a lot of my own quirks in the people I’ve described. It’s more of an interesting juxtaposition – characters with a depth that manifests as repetitive tropes and others who are a blank slate, a surface much like an empty table – blank to the eye, with nothing underneath. If I was extending the metaphor the former group would be a lightly decorated table who either wants to show you what’s hiding underneath or at wants you to take a peek.
I think I tell variations of the same stories over and over again. I’m more reserved than the friend I mentioned. I would never be the one leading a group conversation nor sound particularly eloquent off the cuff. I only land on my best material after stewing about a random situation long after everyone else has forgotten. I sometimes write these things down, like I’m doing right now, though that too falls short in many ways. The idea of a piece or project always becomes something else when written, trailing off in directions both good and bad. I think I want people to see me a certain way, even if I don’t overtly commit to making that possible in different situations. I may be timid or lacking the confidence to talk about all the things I do and think. Admissions that may require me to share more than I’m comfortable with. I can project an air of confidence. I’m self aware enough to know that people see me as a confident or sure of myself, even though I know it’s a quiet exterior masking uncertainty. I end up becoming the person, the anecdotal me, that litters the stories I tell others about myself. I tell them enough times until they have to be true.
GLAZ 