Sometimes the things you think will be the best for you and vice versa

00:07 Genoa, 3:07PM CA

Unfortunately, after several minutes of thinking about it, I don’t think there’s a way to tell this story as an amusing vignette, which is a problem. Today wasn’t the greatest day I’ve had in the archives. I polished a bit the transcription of a document I only just got to yesterday as the archive was closing. When it came time to move on to the next legal case I wanted to trace, I hit a bump in the form of (1) I couldn’t read the documents and (2) the documents didn’t actually seem to mention (as far as I could read them) the individual I thought I was reading about. After the archive closed (mercy abounds!) and after lessons in Italian this afternoon, I went and wrote a couple of emails at the café I’ve been frequenting, and thence home. At this point, I had to decide – get out and be social by going out to dinner with people from school, or stay home like a troll and clean the apartment. Do trolls clean their apartments? The answer seemed obvious.

Here’s the thing, though. The other people from the school are polite, to a person but frankly, I’m just not that into them. Perhaps I wasn’t making enough of an effort, though I think I began the whole endeavor with a pretty open mind. The other students just don’t seem that awesome, frankly. Especially if ‘awesome’ is understood to mean at all interested in me. Some of them even seem to lack basic conversational capacity. Just to pick one example:

Me: Where are you from? I haven’t seen many Americans in Genoa.
Guy #1: I’m from Chicago.
Me: Oh? I went to school in Chicago.
Guy #1: Stony silence

I actually had this conversation not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES with three different people at the table. No kidding. And I doubt that all three of them could have gone to the University of Chicago, which would explain if not excuse their lack of social graces.

I must admit, I was sort of liking the idea of being the only American in Genoa – Model United Nations Brats (or the equivalent) notwithstanding. High schoolers aren’t real people. Just kidding, high schoolers – some of you (especially those I know personally) are very real and interesting people. On the other hand, some of you are just evil robots designed to crush the spirits of the real people among us. Robot or not, surely everyone out there will believe me when I say that it’s not like I was so wedded to the idea of being the only American in Genoa that I would have consciously or subconsciously blown the opportunity to actually see other people outside the archive and classroom.

Even though the group as a whole spoke excellent English – some of them barely spoke Italian at all – I think I actually enjoyed conversing in Italian better. Even if I spent half the time wracking my brain trying to figure out how to say something that beats spending three quarters of the time wracking my brain to think of something (anything) to say in English to either sustain a conversation or attract someone’s interest.

All I know is that I just had a 4.5 hour dinner (delicious, reasonably priced) with what seemed like around 20 people without hitting it off with a single one of them. Perhaps if we had been in a situation more conducive to mingling? I’ll find out tomorrow, I guess, at the housewarming party for my former (and future?) roommate. Anyway, now I’m sitting at home in a messy apartment that should have been cleaned hours ago with no plan for what I’m going to do tomorrow morning in the archive and wondering if I shouldn’t just blow the whole day of work off tomorrow (no). So the next time someone asks me if I want to do some work or take what’s in the box…

I'll take what's in the box.