November 14, 1998
Polite Conversation
How do you go up to a person and say you admire them? No, this isn't some super-celebrity or Nobel prize-winning novelist that I'm talking about. This is a person from your everyday life (or actually my life, in case you haven't realized I write from my own experiences). You see this person everyday, and with luck, you might exchange a nod of the head as some form of hello or a brief meeting of the eyes when one of you realize the other has been staring at the first, but that's it.
You want to go up to them and say how you feel, but there's this wall you must struggle over. How to begin? Diving headfirst into your main points sounds too eager and too threatening, but if you try any sort of comforting small talk will most certainly fall into a wild, unending ramble that proudly showcases your inherent stupidity.
Of course, you like to believe the other person worries the same about this. Your eyes have met a few times and sometimes smiles follow, but in reality, you doubt you even exist in the other person's world.
In the end, you try your best to find the right time, place, and right everything to start up the right conversation, but in reality, it would be much easier if the other person was on your daily e-mail mailing list.