The tendency to pry and break down normal social barriers of conversation with people I don't know that well has always been something exciting/dangerous to me, and just like Russian Roulette, you're gonna spin the barrel and land on the bullet at some point. And boy did I.
I could probably site many examples of why it's better to listen and shut the hell up sometimes, but this one really blindsided me. Through my work, there is a department at one of my "Big Box" clients that lately has been notorious for 66% of the females working there to be getting or going through a divorce. I often wonder if they had a meeting at some point to discuss the finer details of pro's vs. con's of turning their worlds upside down to search for new meat, and while this can easily be played off as pure coincidence, the relationships between these ladies is strong enough that I would not be shocked to learn that there is a sinister plan behind all this.
In normal conversations that occur between myself and the divorce crew, I will normally ask something like "what's new and mind blowing in your universe lately?" This last Thursday proved to further my theory of mass divorce conspiracy, but it was the details of what this young lady ended up saying to me that took a huge dump in my Cheerios. She did no more than hold up her left hand to display that she no longer had a wedding ring on, and this prompted a series of divorce jokes from me, knowing that she has a good sense of humor, and that some light hearted conversation might cheer her up during a not so enjoyable time.
Now this is a perfect example of where it should be widely known that passing off the reigns of this conversation should go to her, she probably has lots to say about it. My broken brain decides to go investigative journalist, asking questions that I probably should leave for her to bring up on her own if she feels comfortable enough with me to discuss. She says to me "It really just came down to having more kids. He wants to; and I'm not ready, and I don't know if I ever will be."
Normal conversation rules dictate that facial expressions do in fact play a key role in determining the route of where talk will lead, just like playing The Sims, you look for thought bubble pictures and sounds that are synonymous with what you are talking about. I should have known after she said this that the look on her face said to me "I don't like talking about kids."
Captain Warning Sign Ignorer (me) went ahead and asked "How many kids do you have now?"
Her response "I had one." Silence......."He died as I was giving birth to him."
Now I had no way of knowing this, and I definitely would not pry to talk about something as tragic as this had I known. Needless to say, having super powers that would allow me to time travel, run through walls, resurrect people, grab words out of the air before ears hear them, would have been super neato right about that moment.
Long story short, I learned a valuable lesson that while fast tracking your way gaining trust from people by asking personal questions, it's often better to just shut the hell up sometimes and let someone else pilot the conversation, certainly when it could involve something tragic that you did not anticipate. I need to stick with things that I'm good at, like saying inappropriate things at the dinner table, screaming at old people while they are driving awful, and hitting things with sticks.
