#theres still value in these sort of friendly acquaintance relationships

[linddzz]

The pottery studio I go to is in a upper middle class area, in what is known through the city as the Wealthy Christian Conservative Zone, and as such the majority of the other people are middle aged to older white women who make little things for their grandkids and talk about their Catholic Bible studies.

Which is all to say it's not my typical crowd as I'm not theirs. I at first just kept my headphones in and kept to myself. But I go multiple times a week, and conversations happen, and it's been a nice reminder to myself the value of what I like to preach about regarding talking to people outside my demographics.

Now, to make it clear, that's mostly because these women have pleasantly surprised me all around. Part of why I've kept going is I haven't heard anything homophobic or transphobic or racist. This isn't to say none of them feel this way, I don't know. But there is a lot of common ground. Hell, maybe they've been pleasantly surprised that the tattood younger woman with the purple undercut is polite and nice to them.

They find out I'm a marine biologist and ask curious questions. One asks if lobsters have feelings because she's concerned after finding out how lobsters are cooked. They're all both amused and fascinated by my answer of "if you ask two animal behaviorists that you'll get ten answers and then the behaviorists will get into a fistfight." This led to a discussion all around on the complex nuance of eating meat and trying to navigate the ethics of the horrid industry and needing to find out what companies actually have better welfare and which are lying.

One told me about her son in highschool. She explains COVID hit his sophomore year and he was so driven and outgoing but the isolation and state of the world have made it so it's hard getting him to go to highschool or think about his future. None of them judge him or blame the quarantines. They all nod in sympathy and we talk about how we don't know how we would have handled the same things at that age, and how it's so hard for kids these days.

One woman says that she's amazed at the GenZ generation. She says her generation got disillusioned but "we were weaker. We just shut it out and got morose and made existential art about how bad society was. But the millennials and GenZ kids said they wouldn't accept it. At this point I go to where the kids are going for protests. They know what they're fighting for."

One tells me about her daughter going to school for anthropology. Her kid loves learning and she herself is shocked at what she doesn't know. "Did you all know that they purposely gave smallpox blankets to Native tribes? It's horrible. I never learned that. I should have learned that."

There's a girl in college for an art degree that works there and it's obvious she feels right at home amongst these women. She talks about a shitty thing her boyfriend said and they all tell her to dump his ass. I chime in with red flags that she's mentioned and they all nod. "Don't just get married because people think you should." One tells her. "Im married now and if I could have done things differently..."

There's enough sympathetic nodding that it's distressing. I've only just started joining the conversation and wish I was at a point where I could tell them their lives aren't over. They can still leave and not settle. But it's heartening in a way to see that they don't want to pass those ideas that still hold them on to the younger women.

I don't know how all these elder, Catholic white women vote and I'm not asking. There's still value. It's good, I think, to see a bunch of women who I would usually be extremely cautious of (and who might be cautious of me) and find how much we can talk, to find they're more nuanced than I may have expected, to see that older generations can learn and do learn and could keep learning.