[MoriartyL]

As the local socially-challenged misfit, it is my duty to make a fool of myself. Therefore, I would like to talk about telephones.

I've always hated getting phone calls, and I've always dreaded making them. For the past few days I've been pushing off an inevitable phone call I'm supposed to make (not about something negative or anything, just an ordinary phone call), and this has allowed me to consider this a bit. I think I know now why I don't like phone calls. I now think that it's not just me (though I certainly have more of a problem than others) - feeling awkward is inevitable, and the only question is how well you can learn to get over it and ignore it.

You see a bunch of people you know talking, and you want to join in. You can't just barge in and change the topic to frogs. You've got to pay attention to what they're saying and wait for an opening. (An "opening" being an opportunity to add something to the discussion.) This is probably the most basic social rule- we have it beaten into us by repetition, and understandably feel awkward when it is broken. Obviously I don't need to tell you any of this, but bear with me- I have a point. Say you want to talk about a specific topic- you can try to push the conversation in that direction (and you will do so more forcefully depending on how much you think these people will be interested in hearing what you have to say), but maybe they don't want to hear about frogs. This is their conversation you've pushed yourself into, and they will have no problem indicating (either verbally or through body language) that they're not interested.

A phone call does not work like this. First of all, you can't wait for an opening because you have no idea what the person on the other end is doing. You force your way in. This has all the tact of physically pulling one of your friends away from their conversation and yelling at them, "WE WILL TALK ABOUT FROGS NOW!". It may be that the person wants to hear from you. But you can't know. To intensify the problem, I have to sit through lots of rings, each one reminding me of my guilt over this. Then you start talking, and it's not the person who has just (potentially) been inconvenienced but the caller who is given the right to control the conversation. So if (s)he is inconvenienced, there's no way to know because it would be impolite of him/her to try to end the conversation so early. This makes it doubly awkward for the caller, because there's no way to know whether the other person is bothered by the call!

In other words, I just hate phone calls.