…and I didn’t even ask him what his name was. Sigh. Oh, well.
In my head, the conversation with this guy flowed around my brilliantly witty remarks, leaving him stunned by my brains and my beautiful American accent.
In reality, it was awkward. Mostly because it happened in the context of me trying to push my bike up a really, really steep hill, and I was, uh, breathing hard (Okay, I was panting. I’m out of shape, okay? And that hill is like, really steep.) So I’m (slowly) working my way up this hill, until this British guy with rather nice blue eyes asks me if he could help me push my bike, since it looked heavy.
No, it wasn’t heavy. I just haven’t regularly ridden a bike since I was ten, and there aren’t hills where I’m from. I just thanked him, and said no, I’ve got it. ‘Cause I’m a strong, independent woman. (Okay, that wasn’t the reason. I was just embarrassed that I was breathing so loud and didn’t want him to know how light my bike really was.) He actually struck up a conversation with me, which is weird for British guys. People aren’t much of a fan of casual stranger-conversation here, which in general is great for us introverted types.
Anyway, in the short walk up the hill, he was extremely impressed that:
a) I’m a student at Oxford Uni (he was a student at Oxford Brookes, another less prestigious university in Oxford).
b) I’m from Florida (less points from me for the cliche “Oh, I went to Disney once! You’ve probably been a lot, haven’t you?” There is, contrary to popular opinion, a lot more to Florida than Disney.)
c) I’m an English major (he actually thought that English was a really hard major, and that I must be smart to be studying it. And he didn’t say the dreaded, “So you want to teach?” 10 points to Gryffindor!)
d) I want to pursue sociolinguistics. (Maybe the impressed part more came from the fact that I had to explain to him what that was. But he thought it was cool once I explained it.)
So three observations about this conversation:
1) Even though it’s been almost four weeks since I arrived here, this is probably my first random conversation with a British stranger. Like I said, it’s an introvert’s heaven here. People just don’t randomly talk to you. Even the salespeople leave you alone, which is just fantastic. I hate it when salespeople ask if you need help. (No, if I needed help, I would ask for it. Leave me alone!)
2) No wonder I’m still single. I didn’t even ask the guy what his name was. I guess I can just give up on my dream of marrying a Brit and becoming a UK citizen, thereby making grad school here much less expensive (my current roommie and I had a plan. I think I’m the liability in the plan.)
3) Hills suck. This conversation could have been soooo much less awkward. But no, there had to be a hill, and I had to be practically wheezing.
Okay, rant/bragging over. Cheers!
Confessions of a Hopeless Introvert 