Humans

One thing I've forgotten as of late is the fact that it doesn't matter how old someone is or what their status is in life, in the end they're all human. I don't know if it's because I've been in Korea for so long (with the whole age deference/acknowledgement thing) but I've started to treat children as children and adults as adults. To a certain extent, there's the "duh" factor because you're obviously not going to talk to a 2nd grade child about your finances or something mundane like that. Or even the weather. I don't know why but I feel like it's specific to adults. And for some reason, it's an interesting topic to talk about with adults.

"It's really cold out there, isn't it?"
"Sure is, Bob."
"Take care and dress warmly!"
"Sure will."

I mean perhaps it's just me because it's almost like a formality in some ways or whatever, but I guess I find it quaint. I wouldn't talk about the weather and tell them to take care if it was someone I didn't care about, y'know? It may just seem to be something to talk about, but I just find it nice. Interestingly enough, I distinctly remember making fun of weather as a topic of conversation when I was younger.

Anyway, going back to the main topic at hand, I used to not care whether the person was young, old, rich, poor, educated, not, interesting, boring, etc. I was able to talk to them as simply a human being. I think that's why some of my students liked me - because I didn't talk down on them. Lately I've been finding that I have been talking down to them and it is not intentional. I've also developed an aversion for talking with older men. This is for another reason that I may talk about on another day. If I feel like it. At any rate, I must remember that it doesn't matter who they, everyone has something interesting to say, it's just a matter of drawing it out of them.