Uncomfortable Social Situations

We've all had them, those uncomfortable situations with people we barely know where we want more than anything to tell them to go away, but for some reason, we don't. Why is that? I am always so reluctant to be rude to anyone that I end up having to lie - a lot. Wouldn't it just be better to say, "Hey, I'm really enjoying sitting here by myself, could you please leave me alone?" or something similar?

Case in point. We met a woman here on Paros at a restaurant. We were talking to a few people at other tables and she sat down at the table next to ours. It became apparent that she was a little strange, but she wouldn't stop talking to us. It was one of those situations where you wish you could turn to the people around you and say, “I really don’t know this woman and don’t share her opinions but can’t get her to leave.” Worse yet, during the next week we KEPT running into her, most of the time we got away with the pleasantries and said goodbye, but Sunday night - we were trapped.


We were just finishing dinner at a sidewalk café and the woman appeared. Rather than say hello, exchange a few words and go on her way, she pulled up a chair. Then she proceeded to tell us how she went to the ATM and found that she had no money. She went into great detail about how the man at her hotel is letting her stay for free for two nights and how she went to a restaurant and offered two drawings (she is an artist) for a few meals. Then she told us the man at the hotel had cooked food for her twice already because he felt bad for her, but she couldn't eat it because it was red meat so she fed it to the dogs. She didn’t seem embarrassed at her situation, nor did she take responsibility for it, she just wanted us to sympathize with her.

I never know what to do in these situations and it was getting extremely uncomfortable, especially since it was obvious that she either wanted us to loan her money or buy her a meal. It was at this point that we started to lie. Rather than just saying, "Hey, sorry for your troubles, but we aren't going to give you money," we suddenly became destitute too. You can't give anyone money if you don't have any, right? Now, to the people listening in at the other tables, we were three destitute people sitting in a restaurant. Not good.

The woman then proceeded to tell us how a used book/clothing shop owner had made her feel terrible about the situation, told her that “beggars can’t be choosers” and said “How could you not know you had no money, don’t you keep track of your finances?” My thought was good for the store owner – I wish I had said some of the same things, but instead I just sat there and nodded my head. She then said that the same thing had happened to her once before when she was in Tunisia. How stupid can you be to have NO IDEA how much you are spending and get stuck in a foreign country – twice?! John told her that it really is a good idea to stash an emergency 100 Euros somewhere in case of emergency when you are traveling. She didn’t reply.

I excused myself to the restroom and whispered to the waitress to follow me around the corner. I told her that I would like to pay her there because I didn’t want to take out any money in front of the woman at our table. She understood immediately and asked if I wanted her to tell the woman to leave. Again, I couldn’t be that rude, if I couldn’t tell the woman to buzz off myself I certainly wasn’t going to have a waitress do it for me.

John feigned sleepiness and we left the restaurant with the woman in tow because she was staying near our hotel. We said goodbye as quickly as possible, headed to our hotel and then made a detour to another café to have our coffee that we didn’t dare order while she was around.

I felt bad for lying, guilty for not helping, mad at the woman for being such a leech, and mad that she had put us in that situation to begin with. If she had been at all willing to take responsibility for her actions I might have done what I could to help.

This lack of ability to tell people what I really think because I don’t want to be rude has happened more times than I can count. Why is it that I have a compulsion to be nice rather than straightforward? This really bugs me. I shall make it my goal that the next time I am in such a situation I will not bite my tongue and nod and try to get out of the situation, but face the person head on and see what happens. Easier said than done, but I promise I will let you know what happens.

Do you usually bite your tongue rather than start a confrontation, or do you go ahead and tell people what you're thinking? What do you think causes you to act in one way or the other? Leave me some comments I really do want to know!

Doing the "not working" thing

Almost all of my posts the past few months have been on our travel blog because that's what we are doing, traveling, 24-7. When my Mom retired she said she had no idea how she ever had time to work and now I know what she meant. It's been a strange transition and I have gone through many stages in the past 5 months:

1. Worry and anxiety - the first few weeks after we hit the road it was hard to relax. I worried about what was happening at work without me, worried about my cat, worried about what life on the road would be like...basically I FOUND things to worry about.
2. Relaxation - after about 2 weeks I started to relax and get into the groove of traveling.
3. Guilt - in the middle of our trip through the states when we were going from a Motel 6 in one town to a Motel 6 in the next town I started to think maybe this was not what I wanted to do with my life. I felt it was necessary to look up information on all of the touristy sites for the next town/region and felt guilty if we didn't go see them. I also felt guilty about quiting, about not earning money, about...well, everything. This is also about the time I started having the teeth dreams. I lost my retainers just before we left Mexico and we decided to wait until we went back to Mexico to get replacements. My teeth started shifting and I had horrible dreams about waking up with my teeth sticking straight out through my lips. I had a lot of trouble sleeping.
4. Displacement and existential angst - when we first got to Italy it was exciting, but it quickly devolved into a feeling of displacement. Everything was strange. On top of that, I started pondering the big questions, the ones you keep at bay during your normal existance by being so busy that they rarely creep up on you. Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? Am I making the right choices with my life? It's a lot harder to ignore these thoughts when you aren't busy! It's also hard to have too many choices! A lot harder than only having two.
5. Homesickness - OK, a lot of what I was feeling before had to do with being homesick in some way, but all of a sudden it got bad. The thing is, when you don't HAVE a home to go home to it's a lot more difficult. This is about the time we started talking about going back to the states and finding a cheap place to call home - even if it's only for 6 months out of the year.
6. Lethargy - I don't know if it is the climate, or the place, but when I got to Greece I started to do nothing and feel OK with it. Our days consist of eating, reading, talking to people, wandering the town or laying in the sun - that's about it. I am starting to feel the urge to take up some of the projects I intended to do on this trip, but I never seem to have the time.

Well, this has turned out to be a very different post than I first envisioned. This is usually the point where I hit the delete key!