Dinner without Conversation

The couple I know through a common friend, but we never met in person. One day they suggested that we meet for dinner. We did, four of us met in a nice restaurant.

The food was fantastic but there was no group conversation. The whole time they were talking to each other not talking to us. I was so surprised; I prepared several topics and didn’t prepare if all of them were of no use. There were three times we were trying to break into their conversations.

First attempt failed miserably. They were talking about local politics. We did prepare this topic because we know the man is involved in a lot of local political events and he has very strong opinions about a lot of policies. We asked an open-ended question, they offered their opinion, then took off, back to their own conversation.

Second try was when they were talking about going back to work. I asked the husband about how he likes his new job. He said the new job pays more and has flexible time, then he turned his face to his wife and continued talking about his new job. He changed his job about two months before the dinner, for sure his wife knew everything about it. It felt weird to watch them talking about it between them.

Third try was when they were talking about walking. The woman is a waitress who needs to walk a lot on her job, and she likes to walk too. I like jogging, we have something in common! Our love for exercise didn’t  translate to an enjoyable group conversation. Finally, we gave up, and started our own conversation.

To this day, I am still puzzled and couldn’t make sense of what happened on that dinner table. Who said life is boring? Real life can be more dramatic than drama.

（The mystery has been solved, and to my surprise, his behavior has nothing to do with us.）