Monday, May 4, 2015

Awkard silences are rare in Las Cruces



AWKWARD SILENCE  Pub date May 10

I was concentrating on allergy season aches and afternoon workloads.
It took me a moment to register that someone I’d never met had just climbed into the hot tub at our health club.
An awkward silence ensued.
I made some comment about good hot tub weather. After all, when you find yourself in what is essentially a large bathtub with a stranger, some pleasantry or greeting seems indicated. But no perfunctory reply was forthcoming and the awkward silence continued.
Later, I realized the incident stood out because awkward silences are so rare in Las Cruces.
At first, I thought it might be something about the physical nature of our territory.
Elevator rides, for instance, are one of the most frequent sites for awkward silences and there are very few elevators in Las Cruces.
But then again, I’ve never experienced an awkward silence during an elevator ride here. I’ve had some intriguing conversations with people from all over the world about the rarity of Mesilla Valley elevators (or “lifts” as they call them in Great Britain, a fellow traveler once informed me) while rising or falling in our still-uncommon, multi-story governmental, office, medical, financial and university buildings.
The escalator at Barnes & Noble on the New Mexico State University campus is an even better source of impromptu chatter. As far as I know, it’s the only one in the county and one of only a few in the whole state. Many of us can’t resist commenting on that fact and reminiscing about other escalators we have known in our travels and far-flung home towns.
“You strike me as someone who never met a stranger,” I was recently told by a nice lady who read a recent Las Cruces Style column and graciously invited me to a May picnic and wildflower appreciation gathering on her ranch.
It was a lovely invitation and compliment that made me feel like a natural-born Las Crucen, thank you very much.
But in my corazon, I know it’s not me: it’s you all.
It’s true I’ve interviewed thousands of you over the past decades, and even on my most shy or introverted days, I find it’s pretty easy to ask anybody their opinions on just about anything.
And that’s because you make it easy. In all those queries, over all those years, I can count the awkward silences, or “no comments,” on two hands without running out of fingers or getting into thumbs. They are so rare, in fact, that I can recall each refusal: most involved language or immigration issues during times of Borderland crack-downs. And even then, most of the refusals were accompanied with polite regrets or attempts to bridge whatever language gaps divided us.
Maybe it’s the wide open spaces, big skies and wild west spirit that foster companionable, rather than awkward, silences. A few friendly words seem like a natural segue from appreciation of nature’s wonders to human urban encounters.
Impromptu conversations are pretty much the norm here, I’ve found, in ticket queues, supermarket checkout lines, at festivals, meetings and during ambles around various plazas.
Nearly every newcomer and visitor I meet remarks about the warmth and friendliness of New Mexicans in general and Las Crucens in particular.
I’ve heard some particularly poignant, appreciative comments from members of minority groups in times of strife, and from those who have relocated from large metropolitan areas or insular, reserved small towns in cooler climes.
In a world perceived as cold, hard, hostile, threatening or downright dangerous, too many people on too much of the planet these days seem to be resigned to keeping silence and maintaining distance.
Just about everyone I’ve talked with here seems to agree that this is a welcoming refuge from all that.
S. Derrickson Moore may be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com, @DerricksonMoore on Twitter and Tout, or call 575-541-5450.

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