Skin Deep

I did a couple of shocking things this week.  One of them involved climbing a mountain, getting stark naked at the top, and hopping around like a lunatic.  The other involved enjoying superficial breakfast conversation with strangers.

The preceding may or may not be true .  But in any case, it’s #2 that’s most out of character.  Superficial conversation is just that: superficial, and we all know that beauty is more than skin deep, that it’s what’s on the inside that counts, that surfaces are deceiving, and on, and on.

Deep conversation is what you’re supposed to enjoy.  It’s what you yearn for as a nerdy high school student, what you savor in French movies, what’s supposed to draw you into Serious Relationships of the Soul.  And who the heck wants to talk to random nobodies when you could be sharing Deep Thoughts with the folks who already enliven or irritate you?

To which I say:  How’s the weather? 

We are who we are, but we also change.  At thirty, I am evidently both more likely to perpetrate mild criminal mischief and more likely to enjoy talking to your grandmother at length about her plans to visit the national sled dog museum.  In an odd way, the combination makes sense to me.   You shuck off the fear, keep your shoes on, hop.