Dads stories

Small talk!

Your letters are getting longer and longer. I hope that I don’t create too much work for you with all my writing. After all I enjoy it. Like Inge wrote in the beginning, I am not the best conversationalist. Quite the contrary – by far the worst especially when it comes to smalltalk. That was always an ordeal for me, when I was still employed. Now and then I had to attend official parties. And everyone was standing around in small groups and babbling about the most silly things. The sound was a constant drone, without heights or depths. (You told me once that Trivial Pursuit is not easy. Ask me! I am totally lost there. I can’t answer one single question.) And the conversations were usually shop talk. “Did you hear that Soandso together with Nowandagain is now playing the main role in film Whatsitsname?” Oh my. And then Soandso and Nowandagain are taken to the cleaners for the next few hours! And I stood there, often on my own, like a pillar of salt with tears in my inner eye and yearning to be elsewhere!
Hedwig on the other hand is brilliant at it, with Trivial Pursuit and entertaining guests! I would kill to have her memory! I have to painfully reconstruct everything. But that is something she is not so good at, reconstruction. But then she doesn’t need it! And on the telephone it is exactly the same. Jeujeujeujeu!
Briefly said: I’ld rather write letters!
Thank you so much for your letter. But the disadvantage of letter writing is that you don’t get a chance to say everything and end up forgetting things. But is that really a problem?

posted by Inge @ 4:36 pm