July 12, 2012

• Small Talk…

   

  As I was sitting at my desk at work today listening to one of the guys I work with make a phone call and start off with “Hey, have you done any fishing lately?” (even though I knew he was calling to talk to the guy about a past due bill), I got to thinking (again) about small talk.

  Have you ever thought about how much our society runs on small talk?

  You run into someone in the grocery store and you stop for a minute and say,

  “So, what have you been up to lately?” and they respond with “Oh, not too much.  How about you?” and it goes from there.

  I understand that small talk is a necessary lubricant in the gears of society, but I pretty much consider it to be a necessary evil.

  Why do you think it is called “small” talk?  Because it is largely unimportant.

  It is even defined as ” an informal type of discourse that does not cover any functional topics of conversation or any transactions that need to be addressed”.

  My point exactly.

                    

  
  

  
  

  I have been known to hide from people in Wal-Mart by ducking into the next aisle or hoping they don’t recognize me from the back.

  Dying my hair every few years helps with this, I think!

  I don’t like after church chatter.  For some reason, that one seems especially bad. Maybe because it is lunch time and you just want to get your high heels and Sunday clothing off and get home and relax.

  That said…we ALL engage in small talk on, most likely, a daily basis.

  And if you start to think about how relationships would function without small talk, you realize that things could get AWK-WARD really quick.

  For one thing, silences are generally not comfortable to most humans.  Particularly when you are with people who are just acquaintances or who you have just met.

  
  

                                       

  
  

  Besides, you can learn quite a bit about someone from just doing small talk.  You get a feel for how they interact, you might find out where they live or what they do for a job or get a glimple into how they view life.

  Just last night, I attended a “Thirty-One” bag party (bought my first bag, by the way. I figured you would be proud, Di Miller!) and I sat across a table from a woman who I had never spoken to before, as far as I know.

  And we made small talk.

  Because that’s what you do.

  I found out a number of things about her and formed a small impression of what she might be like.  And I’m sure she did the same of me. 

  But, here’s where I tend to veer off course.  Maybe.

  Since I don’t really like small talk, and I tend to want to go deep with conversation (pretty much always, if I sense the inkling of a chance for it), I will often ask questions that might seem too personal for some people.  I don’t do this on purpose, I just do it.

  Because that is who I am.

  I sort of figure that if someone is put off by my somewhat personal question within our first 5 or 10 minutes of interaction, then they probably aren’t going to like my style long term anyway and we can just get that out of the way from the beginning.

  A good friend of mine, who is also a hater of small talk, told me recently that her way of getting to know someone is to ply them with questions, just like I tend to do.  But, she told me that once she went out for lunch with a friend and many months later, that friend told her that she was kind of freaked out because she felt like my friend was prying because of all of the questions she was asking.  And here she was just being genuinely interested and displaying that in the only way she knew how.

  Thus we wade into the murky waters of building relationships.  Intentions being mis-read…vibes being given and taken…lots of room for error.  But, oh the possiblities as well!!!

  Last night, my personal-question-asking tendencies played out by this new acquaintance of mine talking about how she had grown up in our small town, she has a lot of relatives here, and how everybody seems to know her family.

  And then I said “So does that bother you?  That people seem to have you labeled because of your family?”

  Now that I think back, her eyes might have widened a bit in shock at the straight forward question, but she handled it well and answered with ease.
  

  You see…here’s what I have learned. (Wow! Don’t I sound like some teacher imparting wisdom. Ha, ha, ha!)

  Not everyone is going to like me.  I am not going to like everyone else.  I won’t connect with everyone.

  The more genuine I am to myself and who I really am when I meet someone and the more I just do/say what comes naturally instead of over-thinking or trying to decide what the other person might like or not like, the quicker we can either part ways or become friends.

  Does anyone else know what I mean by this?

  Jeremy says that sometimes I may come across as too intense and that people could be scared off/intimidated by that or could mis-read it.  But I really don’t know how else to be. 

  I’ve just have found that those people who you can never get past small talk with…you’re never GOING to get past small talk with.

  
  

  About 3 years ago I had a long and intense discussion with a close friend of mine about this. I had been with her to the grocery store and witnessed her chatting it up with someone from her church.  To me, the conversation was completely meaningless and boring and I could have not stood and talked about camping and who is doing what and all of that for nearly as long as she did.

  After the other lady walked away, my friend and I got to talking about small talk.

  Turns out, she loves it.

  She thinks it is a great way to connect with people. She says she is very interested in the surface-y details of their lives.  She also told me that this is how she interacts with many people in her life and she is completely fine with that.  She doesn’t have a lot of close and personal friends.

  This sort of blew my small human mind.  (That’s a quote from “Raising Hope” that Jeremy and I toss around now and then. For some reason, it cracks us both up!)

  So I launched into my expose about how “if that is what your friendship is like, it will probably never go deep and how I choose to spend my time on friendships that have more potential,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

  Then she told me that was selfish of me.

  Well, at least she and I were gettin’ past the small talk!!

  I maintained that I don’t see what purpose these small talk kind of relationships serve.  And she maintained that they were very important in her life.

  I get the part about making “small talk” when you are getting to know someone, as a way to possibly lead into a deeper friendship.  Don’t get me wrong. I do it a lot.  And sometimes I even enjoy it quite a bit, depending on the topic.  Plus, I love meeting new people and making new friends!

  But when I sense that is all it is ever going to be, I tend to move along. I figure the other person probably feels the same way about it and is glad for me to move on as well, so that we can both find someone else who we connect better with. I like to think of it as less selfish and more “doing us both a favor”.

  Anyway, that conversation with my friend made me think a lot.  Our different philosophies about all of this was intrigueing. And almost 3 years later I still remember the conversation with startling clarity.

  I bet if we had talked about the weather or the latest movie we had seen, I wouldn’t remember that conversation one bit.

  I rest my case.

  • 2:28 pm
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