I was in a restaurant with a big group of people last weekend. It was a late night gathering of actors after the play we appeared in was over, drinking margaritas and eating free chips in the Mexican restaurant that I always seem to end up in for decompression after a performance. Who I end up sitting with on any given night is completely dependent on what play I’m in at the time, and who I’m in the play with, and who came to see the play that night that was induced to join us afterward. We usually end up with anywhere from four to fifteen people. The host at the front desk of the restaurant sneers a little bit every time we walk in the door. We never know exactly how many people we’ll have in our party. When we underestimate, we end up having to switch tables at least once after it’s been set, and when we overestimate, we end up with a lot of unused table space that could have accommodated a much larger, better-tipping party. But every now and then we just happen to guess right, and that’s what happened this weekend.

The cast of the play I’m in right now is a pretty fun and easygoing group of people, so the after-show get-togethers have been mostly enjoyable and amusing, even if they lack in excitement. These days, that’s just fine with me. Last Friday was a pleasant group. We sat in the outside patio in the back of the restaurant at one of my favorite tables because it’s round and in the corner, near a heat lamp. The conversation began as it always does, talking about the show that night, the love-hate relationship we all have with the audience, slyly gauging the true opinion of our show from the one member of our party that saw the play that evening, etc. Drinks were had and free chips were eaten, and the conversation began to progress and fragment into smaller groups, as conversations do. This is a process that I’ve always been fascinated in; the way subjects dovetail into others, and how the people in attendance pick and choose which ones they’re most interested in at any time and add what they can at opportune times. It’s at these times that my true place in the world becomes most evident to myself. I am an observer. I’d rather sit amongst the swirling eddy of thoughts whisping around me, letting the streams of thought take their natural course, not adding or changing a thing, just to see where it all ends up. But sometimes I begin to wonder, is it really because I’m an observer, or is it because I’m dull and unoriginal? Have I learned over time through negative conditioning that my adding input or attempts at cleverness are mostly met with little consideration, and sometimes even annoyance? It’s all so much easier to just let it all go by sometimes, and I’m right back at my dining room table as an eight year old listening to my parents and aunts and uncles jabber away as they play cards.

The conversation turned to raising children and politics, and I withdrew. The table was split with two, sometimes three, concurrent topics simultaneously in progress. For a moment I tried to take them all in and chart their individual development, but I quickly became tired. Though I like to think I care about the state of the country, my knowledge of current events and how things really operate is superficial at best, and hearing the fine details makes my brain hurt. Likewise, the concept of parenting and children in general is one that awes me, but I wasn’t in the mood for a lot of dutiful head nodding and cute smiling during another anecdote of a kind of experience I can hardly imagine having in my own life. I began to stare into space, and when that happens, I know from a lifetime of experience that my sociability for the evening is as good as over.

Something different happened this past Friday, however. I caught the eye of the fellow cast member sitting across from me at the circular table. His name is Chris, and I could tell he had, himself, momentarily washed ashore from the currents of dialogue presently raging around us. And I had the sudden, strange urge to be the founder of some new topic, the less important the better. So, looking at the plate before him (he had actually ordered food, sometimes some of us actually do that), I commented that “you can’t go wrong with rice and beans as a side.” He agreed, and quickly our particular strain of frivolity became a discussion of the strange nature of condiments, how they seem so natural for some foods but should never go near others. Our dialogue about relish really seemed to catch the attention of the politicos and parents, and I have to admit that I was, in some way, a tiny bit offended when they broke off from what their previously oh-so-important discussions to join in on our little chat. But I also felt empowered in some strange way.

So no, I can’t add anything new or enlightening in a discussion about how Bush is screwing up our country. And yes, conversations about raising a child make me feel a little empty and cause me to wonder at what point long ago my life began to deviate from everyone else’s. And the fact that I feel like such an outsider even among folks that I seem to share so much with on the surface is kind of dispiriting. But that one little victory was my reminder that when you bravely stand up and pave your own little road, sometimes other people want to drive on it, even if at first you never really had much hope of it going anywhere special.