Tuesday, July 31

I am Ross Gellar

In the process of coming closer to my goal of watching all 10 seasons of Friends (what a goal eh?) I have discovered a connection between Ross Gellar and myself. The title is a bit misleading since there are very many differences between the two of us (hopefully the gender thing is obvious, he doesn’t actually exist, etc.) but one characteristic stood out while I was watching Episode 14 of Season 1 “The one with the Candy Hearts”. Ross is awkward. A specific way that he is awkward is that he is nerdy and truly loves subjects like history, dinosaurs and general scientific facts. In this particular episode he is on a first date with a woman and the audience gets a clip of them sitting awkwardly at a restaurant. To break the silence Ross starts talking excitedly about a new scientific discovery (or something) and ends with what he considers a joke due to the irony of said discovery. The woman manages a small genuine laugh but was unimpressed throughout the telling and the conversation hits another lull.

That’s me! I’d like to think that there aren’t that many lulls for me however I regularly just get going on a topic that I find fascinating only to realize when I have finished that no one else finds it nearly as riveting as I do. The other day at work I was regaling Amanda with an interesting anecdote about my young bilingual cousin and his experience of English speakers trying to speak French only to finish and have Amanda laugh and say “You realize that you just had an entire conversation about the word Bonjour, right?”.

As I prepare to leave for Peru I am also scrambling to read as much as possible. I don’t want to be ingesting too much English while down there so my initial plan to bring hordes of books will likely have to be re-planned. Better finish the Harry Potter soon then!

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