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A couple of weeks ago, I went to someone's birthday party at a bar after work. The birthday girl was a friend of a friend — I was there to hang out with the friend. As often happens at such events, I found myself standing next to someone I didn't know and positioned in a way where we basically had to talk to one another. It would have been weird, otherwise — we had been accidentally shunted out of the main conversational circle (it was a small gathering) and weren't close enough to its center to be able to pretend to listen to what was going on. We were marooned with one another. 几周前，我下了班到酒吧参加一位朋友的生日聚会。过生日的女孩是朋友的朋友——我只是跟着自己朋友去玩的。我又一次遇到了在这种场合下经常发生的事，那就是站在一位陌生人身旁，而且好像非要交谈一下不可。如果不说话会有点奇怪——因为我们碰巧都在主要的谈话圈子外面（那是一个小聚会），我们离圈子中心太远了，没法假装成在听别人交谈。我们躲不掉彼此交谈了。 | 
