Have you tried Toastmasters?

@FrayedBear Why are you angry? Lol

@Piece2YourPuzzle ?? how do you deduce from my suggestion for you to perhaps have a good time that I'm angry?

@Piece2YourPuzzle Ah my emoji!

@Piece2YourPuzzle Simple. In my world you are responsible for replacing what you do not like with something that you do. The emoji has a second meaning - "disagree".

@FrayedBear I don't "dislike" being bad at it and I don't see it as a problem for me. I dislike small talk, but I don't dislike not being good at it just like I don't dislike being bad at being a bridge builder (no pun intended). It's still my choice anyway.

After 40+ years of Australia Len you may find that habit dies off a little. ?

You would hate it in California. Lots of friendly people here. Strangers strike up conversations with each other all the time.

@misternatureboy "wow, that was a BIG one!" after an earthquake is not generally viewed as an imposition, right? lol! been there, done that! i rode plenty of buses in california. one of the best conversations i ever had was on a bus with someone who had been a stranger. (strangers don't always remain strangers.) she was a little girl, riding the public bus, alone, to school. she sat down next to me and we talked. one day she started to say something and then she stopped. "what?" i asked.

"oh," she said, sheepishly. "i forgot you weren't a kid. i was just going to tell you some kid stuff."

that was one of the highest compliments i ever received!

funnily enough, her mother and i also used to strike up conversations on the bus, and it took me ages to realize that these two even knew each other, because i never encountered them on the same ride. they lived a couple blocks from me and i never would have met them had i been unwilling to strike up conversations with strangers.

on the other hand, i haven't only done that in california. but i could not help noticing that minnesotans are, or at least were when i first got here, more reserved.

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@genessa
"she was a little girl, riding the public bus, alone, to school. she sat down next to me and we talked."
Do that in the UK you'd be on the sex offenders register before you could say "Stranger Danger"

@LenHazell53 why? she sat down next to me. i probably said hello or something similarly suspicious.

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@genessa, @misternatureboy Don't get me wrong, I'll talk to people in social situations, or at places of shared interest, but if I am out alone, I am invariably doing something and so am busy, I don't particularly want to know about you unless you have something interesting to say and I have asked you about it.
If you are a cab driver I'd rather you concentrated on driving instead of telling me who you once had in the back of the cab.
I have a very low bullshit tolerance, even less so for trivialities and small talk.
I know what the weather is like, i am out in it
I know buses are always late
No you don't know me from somewhere or else you would know who I am
No I don't want a Sweet, I am sugar intolerant
I am not interested in someone's Aunt sally who once went to a hospital for a check up and came home with her arm in a cast, and when they removed the cast there was just her fingers and her shoulder and the arm was missing.

@LenHazell53 gee, i usually just tell people if i like something they're wearing. if they look as if they're absorbed in some other activity i leave them alone. i don't just yack for the sake of yacking. is there no in-between for you, no possibility that someone could be friendly without being obnoxious?

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@genessa Being female you might get away with it, but in the North of England, it is a place where a Paediatrician was once chased out of her home by an angry mob because her title sounded to much like Paedophile.

@LenHazell53 if that were typical, it probably would not have been reported, right?

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@genessa Again maybe it is local, but English, people, English men especially find it highly suspicious if a stranger talks to you, they are usually either after something, trying to sell you something or trying to distract you while someone else picks your pocket.
I worked in retail for years, friendly strangers who want to chat are usually up to something, or have a partner who is emptying the shelves in to a sack.

@LenHazell53 i've spent quality time in england, struck up conversations with stranger, including shop clerks, and never had a problem, except for one guy who chatted me up to get some money out of me. i found him amusing but he dropped me when he realized i was on to him.

your story reminds me of a poll here that found a certain percentage of participants would kick their kid out of the house if they found out he was a homo sapiens.

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@genessa Paedophiles tend not to get reported in Teesside, they tend to be found dead in their front rooms and nobody saw nothing.

[dailymail.co.uk]

@genessa lol, yeah I've heard that one before, people that dumb I would rather not talk to

@LenHazell53 you mistake my meaning. i mean the idiots mistaking the person's job for the word for a sexual deviant and chasing her out of her home. that has to be unusual or it would not have been reported.

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@genessa No I understand, but moral panic sells news papers, about twenty years ago the whole area was embroiled in the biggest child sex abuse case ever and the papers and TV made such a fuss over it that all the rent-a-gob wanna be vigilantes here abouts have been on the hunt ever since.
It turned out in the end it was two local child services doctors who were diagnosing almost every child referred to them as an abuse victim, but by the time this was discovered a culture of caution set in, talking to an unaccompanied child who is not directly related to you or who is not under your guardianship is a big no no especially if you are male. (my first aid instructor even told us not to administer first aid to minors with out first getting permission from a parent and being chaperoned.

It's a mad world.

@LenHazell53 well, a mad portion of it, anyway.

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@LenHazell53 I would definitely want to hear more about Aunt Sally.
England sounds like a miserable place. I used to live in a country where people kept to themselves a lot and friendliness was perceived with suspicion. Being an extrovert, moving to California was such a breath of fresh air for me.

@MissMac I know, it happened in Portsmouth after particulally savage child murder, but it did happen in Teesside too at the height of the Doctors Marietta Higgs and Geoffrey Wyatt 1987 fiasco, and in then again Gwent where a Podiatrists office was vandalised with the word Pedo spray painted on the door.
It was all preempted by a cartoon in Private Eye magazine four months before which showed a man running from an angry lynch mob screaming "I'm a Paediatrician"
This lead to a mock weekly article
101 things to mistake for a paedophile.

You mean that you believe that it once was great?

@FrayedBear This countrynhas always had enormous potential, and it’s beautiful, and there are many caring concerned people. It’s also been run by white men happy with a white supremacy, patriarchal culture, whcih is inherently problematic. And the misplaced idea that it is a Christian country is a problem. So we are not without our issues here. But most countries have issues.

@UUNJ ? my question was partly rhetorical and slightly tongue in cheek.
It was good of you to reply, thank you.... Conversation with a stranger - and some say they don't get stranger than Frayed Bear's. ?

A dumb joke, and not an obvious one. I am trying to say that I am often more crude to the ones I love than strangers. Not a good habit I know.

? Isn't that supposed to be "a stranger is a friend that you haven't made yet"?

? Hello.

@FrayedBear I'm just saying leave strangers alone. Well. I leave strangers alone. I'm not good with new folk.

@weelittleone I find it fascinating however that almost everything I have encountered about you says "I'm me I want to be noticed." You are noticed and that is the first step to moving from stranger to "hey buddy, wanna drink and share your craic". If you don't mind me saying so, you are good at that and that is good enough for me and for you to converse and share more.

@FrayedBear that's nice of you to say. But I might note that this site is a bit artificial regarding meeting strangers. No one has to see what I look like, how my voice sounds, how short I am, that my clothes don't fit well... All that stuff. Over here, our standard is how well we respond over time with our typed out words. IRL I would never join or start the conversations going on here

There are many arseholes presenting themselves and their shopping at the checkout. Lol, there are also some "beauties" on the checkout as well!

The person who believes that "it is better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it", is usually just in need of a good dose of self esteem. There is nothing wrong with them.

Does it truly do that or is it like the check out chicks insincere "have a nice day"?

@FrayedBear That doesnt fly when your income is tip based.

@dellik each struts the stage and plays his part. You admit to a false front. The customer accepts that as part of the social contract.
I have never had to work under such crappy conditions and thank you for opening my eyes to the possibilities. At one point I became local union delegate in a national campaign that saw wages in a so-called profession be shamed into coming out of the 1800's. Being a waged employee sometimes, however, has worse implications than being tip based as you are beholden to one person directly responsible for your income. When beholden to many you have the luxury of less damagingly telling the obnoxious to fuck off.

@FrayedBear I have done both through out my career. (served front of house, cooked and ran kitchens back of house.)
It honestly works the other way, (I know, counter intuitive)
If I am good enough at what I do, I can tell a manager (or even owner ) to fuck off and let me work, without any actual repercussions. But no matter how good I am, if I were to say the same to a single customer, as a server, I am going to be unemployed.

But The actual point I was trying to assert is that my 'false front' serves me well in normal social situations as well. as a chronicly antisocial person, if I wish to make people more comfortable/unaware of my own discomfort I can turn on that persona, leaving all but the closest to me unaware of my unease.