Ask Me Weather I Care

Canadians must be boring. This may sound like a gross generalization, but I'm being forced to make this assumption based upon the sheer amount of idle chatter I've been stumbling into regarding the weather.

Why are Canadians as a nation so fixated on this topic? How come at some point in every conversation it creeps in to fill the silence? Do we as a people have nothing better to say? If your ability to converse with me is so strained that all you can do is state a fact like it is nice out, then why are we talking? Wouldn't it be mutually beneficial to both of us if we didn't force a conversation about something that we both walked through on our way into the office? Call me crazy, but it makes as much sense to me as having the following conversation:

You - "Hey Sean, your shirt is green."
Me - "Ah, yes, it is. Your hair is brown."
-fin-

Is there anything to be gained here? I enjoy a good conversation as much as the next person, but I certainly won't be offended if you give me a nod and silence absent of awkward observations of the mundane. I'm not a great talker. I am very bad at generating and maintaining a conversation that I have no vested interest in. I'll respect you 100% more if you save me from it. If you have my attention, you'll know my opinion.

Please don't even get me started on our ability to complain. More precisly, complain about the weather. Combining our want to babble about the weather with our ability to complain is like the perfect storm of annoying Canadian habits. The only thing worse than hearing "it's too hot" and "it's too cold" is when in the fall, I have to hear both every other day. Gah!

I suppose I'm just bitter; the weekend course I was taking has just concluded and most of my human interaction for the next three months is limited to work. For those of you without a job where nothing much changes from day to day, you will find out that weather chat becomes a staple in your people skills around the water cooler. I'm going to miss those classes very much in part due to conversations of substance.

I'm as guilty as the next person sometimes in regards to using it as a tool to fill the awkward silence. Therefore, how about we agree going forward that we'll fill the awkward pauses with something a little less obvious. Tell me about you. Tell me about your life. Just respect me enough to assume I can see what is happening outside my window. Save the weather chat for the blind.