Hello, dear readers, and welcome to the weather issue. An apt theme, I think, as we barrel into what we here in Iowa very generously refer to as spring. In reality, it’s two months of light snow showers, punctuated with false hope. It’s particularly stressful for people like me, who do not and will never possess the organizational skills required to check the weather every morning before getting dressed. Three times so far this year, I’ve left the house in a sundress and driven home from work in a blizzard. I have also lost my phone in the fridge multiple times, but that’s neither here nor there.
Perhaps because we have so much going on in this department, we Iowans love to talk about the weather. It’s the perfect topic to fulfill our fetish for polite small talk: uncontroversial, undemanding and of interest to practically everyone. The average office worker in Iowa will hear about the weather 4,712 times every week. That’s a real statistic, and that’s because it’s working for us. Nobody, in the history of the world, has complained about this status quo, and yet here I am, begging you to stop, because if I have to hear about wintry mix one more time, I am going to lose my mind.
Here’s an exercise in alternatives: Picture tomorrow. There you are in the break room, waiting for your low-sodium minestrone to heat up and fantasizing about climbing out the window, faking your own death and moving to Bora Bora. You’re not even 100 percent sure you could point to Bora Bora on a map, but it has to be better than here.
Suddenly, you see Cara from administration out of the corner of your eye. She’s here to reorganize the Keurig cups and make sure you haven’t exceeded your 30-minute lunch break. The silence between you is so thick, you could cut it with one of those flimsy plastic butter knives they keep in here for some reason. God, this is awkward. You have to say something, but what is there to say to a woman who has a framed photo of someone else’s pug on her desk?
You open your mouth and say…
“Did you hear what Todd said about Jessica?” Can’t go wrong with good, old-fashioned office gossip. People look down on gossip because the Bible said not to do it or something, but Jesus underestimated how much of modern life would be built on talking shit about innocent people.
“Yesterday, I saw a dog wearing a sweater, and—” Another option is to put her off completely by just being yourself. There’s nothing people hate more than when you’re vulnerable and honest about who you really are, so if you want her to stop looking over your shoulder while you’re on Facebook, let fly with that internal monologue.
“So, how about this war?” Look at you, all grown up and talking about current events!
This article was originally published in Little Village issue 304.
