Every now and then, among the Baby Blue Jay Injured, Seeking Free Prom Dress, Are These Your Goats?, Flying Squirrels?! headlines, I find a post that transcends the genre:

Egyptian Man, Looking to Make Friends

I ride the bus for work every day

I smile and wave and say Hello

to people I pass

but almost no one answers.

I still don’t know anyone

after ten years.

I wish someone would say something.

I am lonely.

And a response that transcends most second chapters:

Response to Egyptian Man

I’m a foreigner too

and had the same experience as you.

It is still a mystery to me

as I have lived other places

all over the world

where people are pleasant

and kind,

if only just on the surface—

a smile at the bank or

supermarket—small gestures.

I have one friend now

and have stopped trying

for more.

I am happy alone.

My advice to you is:

Don’t try too hard.

Don’t be too friendly.

Don’t smile too much.

I was told once, years ago,

that “only idiots smile all the time”

We may be lonely foreigners

but we are not idiots.

“Egyptian Man” and “Response to Egyptian Man” are the saddest things I’ve ever read on Small World. Sometimes I think they’re the saddest things I’ve read anywhere. Does it get more tragic than wanting to connect but being told that people who try too hard are idiots? Maybe I’m meant to read this right now. Maybe I’m meant to understand that I shouldn’t risk looking like an idiot with Lydia. That decades of long-distance living can’t be bridged in only a few months’ time. That closeness will come, or it won’t, but forcing it might be worse than not trying at all.

About the Author

LAURA ZIGMAN is the author of Animal Husbandry (which was made into the movie Someone Like You, starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd), Dating Big Bird, Piece of Work, and Her. She has been a contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post; produced a popular online series of animated videos called “Annoying Conversations”; and was the recipient of a Yaddo residency. Zigman lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, son, and deeply human sheltie.

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Copyright

SEPARATION ANXIETY. Copyright © 2020 by Laura Zigman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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