My Co worker

In my last post I made mention of a co worker of mine who's taken a rather strong interest in me, given that I'm just a temp. She's been working at the organization for several years now. Prior to that she worked 20 years for a customer service phone call in center. She's live her entire life in LA and has only left LA to visit family in Northern California and El Paso. She's single, but lives with a sibling and her family. She admits that she rarely goes out nor does she go to movies or watch TV. She spends her spare time doing family activities, playing computer games, reading and streaming video on the web.

She's over 50 years old.

Yet she's a very warm and friendly person. She's excellent on the phone dealing with potential new members. But her world is rather limited. She finds me rather astounding, given that I've moved several times in my life, often for no other reason than the sake of accumulating some life experience. I do not come from a close, tight knit family. I'm not a physically expressive individual and I can be quite cold and intellectual in my speech, especially among those I just barely met. In other words, I have boundaries. It takes time for me to let people get close to me. She finds this sad, and perhaps she has just cause. Last week she pumped me for a lot of info about my family, how I was raised, what we did, how we treated each other, how we expressed affection for each other. Given that I'm doing very routine and repetitive clerical work, such conversation was stimulating and afforded me the opportunity to reflect on my upbringing, which I haven't done in some time. Yet I also feel her questions reveal more about her than any of my answers revealed about me. There were times where I felt she crossed the line as she would get to teasing. I'm not above self mockery, but at a certain point, we're in an office situation and she needs to back off. What I resented at times last week was that it seemed she was hoping to mold me into something that she could understand and fit into her world. If I learned anything in my life it's to learn to take people for what they are and respond to them accordingly rather than be utterly baffled. We all come from a wide variety of backgrounds that help shape us. I think given (based on what she has told me) her restricted life experiences, she seems prone to view the way she and her family relate to each other to be the appropriate template for all families to emulate. Given how innately intelligent she is, it's a shame she was never adventurous enough to get out of LA and away from her family for a few years and try living life in which she would have to build her own support base from scratch. Perhaps she might have a different take on someone like me.

Fortunately today at work she kept herself busy and did not bother to chit chat with me or anyone else. I wonder if it was because the workload was heavy, or if she was instructed at last friday's staff meeting to lay off me? I guess I'll find out as the week progresses.