I’m comfortable admitting that I’m bad at most things. I’m really bad with names, I’m terrible with numbers, and aside from changing a tire or jump-starting a car, I’m an awful mechanic. I’m not good with finances. I wish I were a better writer and public speaker. I cannot hold my own in a conversation about football, beer brewing, brand names, or corporate workplace culture. I’m not very handy. I’m not keen on what's going on in Hollywood or who won a Grammy Award or who got eliminated on that one show.
I also really don’t like small talk. I don’t know how to chit chat for the sake of avoiding awkwardness. I much prefer what most would consider “awkward silence” - I just call it “silence”.
“Cold out there??? HAHAHA”
“Yep, it sure is…”
“We could use a warm up! WHERE’S THAT GLOBAL WARMING?!”
“I mean, it’s Jan-”
“We had that warm up the second week of December, remember that? Or maybe it was the third week of November. Anyway, I was out there in shorts! It felt like Florida! BRING MORE OF THAT ON!!”
“Well, uh, that wouldn’t-”
“BUUUUT if we have to suck this up for another few months I guess it’s not the end of the world. Florida IS nice and all but there are also gators and snakes and “tHe sTaTe BiRd”, the mosquitoes HAHAHA.
*Me scheming to find a way out of this stupid conversation*
But speaking of gators and snakes, those are two of a select few things I do know about and like. Look, I didn’t choose this life, the life chose me.
Most people who know and like snakes know a lot about them. You’re either all in or you’re all out. What happens is you develop a fondness for something most people make ugly faces at, and then you have to double down. By that, I mean learn about and become fascinated by snakes and then constantly defend them against a contrarian society unwilling to offer a moment of their time to allow you to explain why snakes ought to be respected and not maligned as if they are Satan incarnate. It’s frustrating from this side of the line, watching otherwise intelligent and fully functioning adults contort their bodies and spew the most illogical accusations against something they know little to nothing about. Few things make people do this. Spiders, sure. Coyotes are culprits in suburban mom circles.
Sometimes, in a controlled environment where I have a captive audience, I get to talk about snakes (or salamanders, or turtles, or frogs, etc) for people who have left the comfort of their homes to learn. I do not take this lightly. These talks are usually held in libraries but sometimes at universities or other large venues where travel, parking, and other logistics can be tricky. That’s a lot of pressure on me to deliver. But here’s where I'd struggle the most - exactly what will I say?
For a long time I’d present a slide show and just talk about what I thought people wanted to know. For example, if my topic was native turtles, I would first summarize what a turtle is, touch on turtle cladistics, maybe focus on a select few local species, and then always end with conservation. Audiences appeared engaged, so I just repeated the technique time and time again.
But as time went on, I noticed that I was fielding some elemental questions, few of which had been derived from my talk. “What does a turtle’s shell feel like? How can you tell the age of a turtle? What should I do if I see a turtle on the road?” I began to get the feeling that the phylogeny of the family Emydidae was not a burning topic in the minds of general naturalists on a Thursday evening.
The problem I had gotten myself into was that I had become ultra herp-centric. One may call it an obsession. And I had long gotten past the Herps 101 phase. I had forgotten how to effectively communicate my topics to a layperson. Reminding myself that most people understandably do not have even a fundamental understanding of what a reptile or amphibian is became an important step. But did you know that some people don’t even consider a snake an animal? Seriously. A cow, a pig, a lion, those are animals - but a snake is something else.
My point is, unless you’re drafting a scholarly paper, use the KISS method (keep it simple, stupid). Know your audience. You can easily distance yourself from some truly worthy folks by allowing the nerd factor to take over.
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