(no subject)

[darchildre]

The thing about knitting in public is that it tacitly invites conversation.

Mostly, this is fine - I mostly get people who want to talk to me about their elderly relatives who used to knit when my interlocutor was young, or the time they tried to take up knitting but failed at it. Or I get fellow knitters (this is the best) who want to tell me about their own projects or discuss techniques.

But sometimes, it is inexplicable, like the gentleman at choir tonight who insisted on telling me the plot of Banshee of Inisherin because I guess there is a good sweater in it? And then wrapped up by saying, "It's set in Ireland of course. I used to live in Scotland, which is why I wanted to see it." Sir. Those two facts do not follow.

And occasionally someone decides to have a completely horrifying conversation with me*, apparently inspired by my knitting. The other knitting conversation I had at choir tonight was with a woman who started off by talking about the benefits of knitting for helping with anxiety and then transitioned into telling me about a relative of hers who had anxiety, and trichotillomania, and eventually had to drop out of her PhD program because she got pregnant and had terrible worrying PPD. It was harrowing - the story just kept getting worse and there was no way for me to leave because rehearsal was just about to start, so I just had to sit there with my eyes on my knitting occasionally murmuring, "Oh, that's awful," and desperately trying to psychically nudge my director into starting early. I don't even know this woman's name.

I think next rehearsal, I am going to bring a book.





*People also have horrible conversations with me at work, but that's because there is a certain type of person who will tell literally anything to the person at a library desk. Shout out to the woman whom I'd never seen before and have never seen again but who lives in my mind forever because she told me a long story about how she was sad because her dog had died recently "but he died mid-coitus, so I guess he was happy when he went."

Comments

[darchildre]

Fellow crafters are lovely to talk to. None of the people who tell me terrible stories are fellow crafters - they are randos who see me crafting and decide I am a sympathetic and (more importantly) captive/nonmoving audience.

I don't get a lot of the I Pay Your Salary people, and I find those don't want to tell me their medical problems or their relatives' troubles. The people who want to tell me about their dead dogs or estranged children are either complete strangers who need anyone to talk to, or people who've formed a parasocial relationship with me in their mind and therefore think we have a much closer relationship than actually exists. I don't want to attribute malice or entitlement to them.

[silveradept]

Most of the people doing that are, as you say, people who have mistaken the actual relationship they have with you as something more intimate than it is, or who are taking advantage of the fact that you're crafting in public to tell you things.

I suspect there's always some percentage, though, who like causing the discomfort or seeing a person squirm or otherwise hope for a way out. They're not as obvious as the "come fix my computer, surprise, it's fine and here's porn!" people, but I do wonder if they like it, even if they wouldn't admit it to anyone that they do.

[darchildre]

I do get people (mostly at work - this isn't a while-knitting problem) who are clearly trying to deliberately make me uncomfortable through conversation. They're nearly always men, who want to make me feel stupid or flustered. They aren't the dead dog people - you can tell because they're in a good mood while they're talking and also because the dead-dog people are almost always women who just want someone to share their problems with and have chosen an inappropriate recipient. It's fairly easy to tell the difference.

We appear to have very different patron populations. I have never had someone trick me into looking at porn at one of our computers - I'm sorry that's happened to you.

[silveradept]

Or different experiences. I've had the oversharers, but I've mostly been called in to be the heavy when someone else is doing the harassment to my coworkers, because, well, I look like someone they might respect. Or someone who will tell them to get it and then follow up on it if they don't. So I have had to deal with different people.