Frivolous movies

I had a conversation earlier this week about the Twilight movies and whether they are worth watching or not. And if they are good things for teenager girls to watch or not.

I actually do not have a very strong opinion on this. I have read all the books and will probably see all the movies. And while I think the first book is pretty good example for younger ladies, I'm not so sure about the other three books.

And though I feel that my roommate might gasp when I say this, "I could probably pass on seeing the movies." So why, you may ask, do I go? I enjoy social interaction of it.

Ok, so I'm a nerd. Small talk with me, isn't normal. It just isn't. First of all, I'm blunt and usually get bored with small talk, second of all, what do I have to talk about?

Example:

"So what do you do?"

"I'm a graduate student who gets paid a minimal amount of money to work on resistance nodulated family efflux pumps of vibrio cholera, the gram negative bacteria endemic in many developing countries that causes massive diarrhea that can lead to death. But don't worry, people only become infected after ingesting contaminated food or water."

awkward pause....

"That's interesting."

So I enjoy having something common to share. I noticed this the most last Christmas on my mom's side. This is a group of bull-headed germans of various interests and little small talk besides arguing over who remembers decades old memories the best, while playing Euchre of course. But last Christmas, over dinner, we talked books. Which actually should have been an obvious source of common interest, considering my grandmother's head-stone is in the shape of a book. But all of a sudden, I found myself talking with my decade older cousin and her two teenage step-daughters about Twilight. I always want to talk to the teenagers, but don't know where to start. So this was great. And it was something in common. Even though my dad may have been slightly mocking. I plan on keeping in mind the book worm conversations for the next get together.

I was reminded of this today when I was at the pool with two of my grad school girls. A black lady with her pack of kids had seen us reading our books and overheard us talking of our plans of seeing the upcoming Twilight movie and proceeded to talk to us about the books. It was so random, but I really enjoyed it. It seemed pretty obvious that her friends and family weren't interested in the books and we talked about a couple of other movies/books/tv shows too. But I enjoy having things to talk to strangers about. Well and to friends too, of course.