dear people who have social skills,

[mandyessa]

What does it mean when someone you don't know initiates the following conversation (in karate class

Comments

[zathrus]

I'm not entirely sure what she was trying to say, because I don't know her. Some possibilities include

[zixi]

Yeah, um, what Newt said.

That conversation sounds very, very odd. I mean, I could imagine in Karate asking about that if you were planning to spar or something maybe but just to ask out of the blue...weird.

[mandyessa]

yeah, we weren't sparring, we were with partners, but we had been for a while. She isn't an exceptionally large person, I don't think she is larger than I am, though Gis are remarkable deceptive.

[zixi]

Huh. I would just chalk it up as "person being weird" then. Not that I'm overly socially competent but...the whole thing feels odd.

(I've also heard enough skinny friends talk about people making that type of weird comment to them (or much ruder) that I think for some reason some people take it as an excuse to be rude.)

Slenderness not a crime

[dad_m]

Because I am seen to eat sweets and still look thin, if not as scrawny as I was in my twenties, people sometimes express envy: "It's not fair, you eat anything you want and never gain an ounce." (Not entirely true, but close enough.) This sometimes sounds as if they think I do it on purpose to rub it in that they have to watch their diet carefully to stay at a healthy weight, or that because they don't, they're not. Sometimes I say there's a price for this metabolism: I start feeling very cranky, and can't always manage to be good company, if I don't give my body calories when it expects them. This doesn't always convince. My best beloved used to say that if we ever divorced, it would be because of what I did and said while driving home from church, often my hungriest time of the week. (I'm managing the Sunday morning caloric intake better nowadays, thanks in part to snacks at Sunday School, which is why she "used to say" it