Please Shut Up!

I had to take the bus from one city to another today. On the way home, a bunch of chatty students college students got on and I actually said, "oh no" out loud. Of course, all of the empty seats were next to me, so I had to suffer through their inane conversations and even music before someone else got off and I was able to change seats. One of the things that really bothers me is that people probably have no idea how annoying it is to be forced to listen to them talk (especially small talk). Even if they did know, I'm afraid many wouldn't care.

I wish I could make them feel my irritation. I wish that I could, just for a few moments, just long enough for them to understand, make them know what it is like to have to hide away from one's own society, to have to create a haven where one is comfortable, rather than have it ready-made just by the way society is structured, to deal with the knowledge that so much of the world is not well-suited to a basic component of your being.

It is socially acceptable to chatter on and on in close quarters with strangers, but that acceptability is totally arbitrary. It doesn't have to be that way, and the knowledge of that also makes me angry. This society could have evolved with the understanding that subjecting strangers to unnecessary, irrelevant conversation is rude. But, it hasn't evolved that way, and that one small detail makes all the difference between who gets fulfilled and who gets irate in social circumstances.