35. Make Small Talk

Can we skip the small talk and just talk about the "Personal Life" section of your favorite famous person's Wiki page?

The personality I strive for when I speak French isn't particularly interesting. It mostly just hinges on being a) polite and b) grammatically correct. I thought the more my French improved, the more this would change, but even after five years, I still lack the confidence to do something wild. Like make a joke. Or make an obscure reference to my favorite Pulp song.

Small talk in French is still painful for me. Unfortunately, small talk is also a big part of my life here since I am a creature of routine. I see much of the same people every day for short increments of time, and that means a lot of small talk. Here is a ranking of this daily small talk on a pain scale of 1-10, with 1 being easy and 10 being that prank interview with Elijah Wood.

1-3: My Daily Monoprix Run

I go to my local Monoprix every day, and I can do this small talk in my sleep. In fact, there's a Filipino guy who works in the produce section, and we speak in a mix of Tagalog, English, and French. This Monoprix is basically my small talk safe space.

4-5: My Gardien

The gardien in my building is very kind and helpful, and I see him nearly every day while I wait for the elevator. The small talk doesn't get tough until we get past the usual exchanges of "ça va bien?" But recently, an exciting development happened: he went on vacation to Vietnam, and he hasn't stopped talking about it since -- he told me he assumed I would be interested because, according to him, we both like all things "Asiatique." I let this wild assumption slide because it means we now have at least three minutes worth of small talk every time we bump into each other.

6-8: School and Daycare Drop Off

One of the downsides of procreating is all the small talk you have to do with fellow parents, teachers, administration, and crossing guards. I don't want to come off as grumpy or unapproachable, so I do my best, but it is exhausting for me. On a recent playdate with a perfectly nice and friendly mom and her kid, we small talk-ed for nearly two hours -- a record for me in French. Afterwards, I felt like I had run a marathon, and I had to watch an hour of soap-cutting ASMR videos after to recover.

9-10: The Wax

The worst small talk incident happened to me very recently because it came out of nowhere. I was getting a bikini wax because the world is on fire and nothing matters. Usually, these waxes are done in complete silence with only the Enya-like muzak playing in the background to fill the room. This time, however, the wax technician seemed hellbent on chatting it up. I often say my French gets worse when I'm hungry or tired, but I suppose an addendum to this would be: my French turns nonexistent while I'm trying to navigate the subjunctive tense and hot wax on my nether regions at the same time.

But I did it, and not once was my French so bad did the woman take pity on me and switch to English. Unfortunately, this is yet another instance that I cannot bring up during my citizenship interview to prove my ties to my new country. And even worse: it's not even worthy material for small talk.