A secret known only to me, Patricia Highsmith, and everybody else on earth is that there’s nothing easier than making small talk with complete strangers. It’s people you know a little that are a problem—or a crowd made up of people you know a little and some you know well, or a crowd of people who all know each other but don’t know you at all. Those occasions are when I find myself retreating into silent contemplation (Patricia Highsmith went off to get drunk with her snails).
But people you don’t know, and, in particular, people you might never see again (or, even if you see them again, you will only encounter in similarly brief ways)—those people are the easiest people to chat with on God’s green Earth. And the reason is pretty simple: you don’t really have to care about what the other person thinks of you, because you are never going to see them again.
And they don’t have to care about what you think of them, because… ditto.
In my time in Oregon I would say I’ve pretty well hit my personal best streak of talking to strangers. I talk to them basically every day, mostly in car rides back and forth to the library because the place where I’m staying is too far away for a daily walk.1 Most of these conversations start with the classics, i.e., the weather. The weather is a small talk staple for a reason. It’s always there and you’re both in it. I’m aware this banality is why some people claim to hate small talk. If you are thinking to yourself “no, I don’t want to talk about the weather with strangers, I want to talk about the soul,” well, number one, you probably don’t want that.
Number two, you really have no idea the kind of things people will start saying to you if you make a habit of talking to them, particularly if they know they’ll never see you again. A guy talked to me about how his grandfather (or great-grandfather, can’t remember) drove cattle from Texas to Oregon, and when two hired hands tried to leave, he shot them and left their bodies for the animals to pick over. We got there because I made a comment about the weather.
Now I didn’t get the impression that was some kind of dark family secret, to be clear. (If I had, I wouldn’t have put it in this newsletter.) I am saying that if you say “tell me about your family” people will think you’re weird. If you say “nice weather,” they might tell you about their family. The weather is also a way of seguing into questions like “have you always lived around here.”
It is also worth saying that this kind of talking does not, in my experience, have much to do with introversion or extraversion. It is more like the difference between hosting a party, where you always have an excuse both to begin and end conversations, and attending a party, where you are cast on your own resources for “having a good time.” I prefer hosting parties to going to parties because I can always dip out to do something. A conversation that ends when the car ride ends can go anywhere, because I know that in ten or twenty minutes I’ll be out of the car.
The reason to have fun chatting with strangers is, let me say now, not to “touch grass” or “get in touch with real people” or “build community.” You are not doing any of these things. To the extent that you’re doing the second, that is just because all people are real. They do not come in concentrations where some people are 50% real 50% isopropyl alcohol and others are 100% uncut reality. You aren’t touching grass because in most of these interactions you are a customer and thus the other person’s range of responses is limited.2 (That is part of why the Thomas Friedman “I talked to my taxi driver” move is not a substitute for talking to people who are not your taxi driver.) And you aren’t building community because you will never see this person again.
There are two reasons to do this, even if you don’t really want to, albeit reasons that kind of contradict each other:
Number one, it’s good to have conversations that have no point whatsoever.
Number two, if there’s something about yourself you wish were different, you can practice being different for ten minutes at a time.
That is, if you think, “I wish I were more outgoing,” you can be outgoing for ten minutes. If you think, “I wish I were a powerlifter,” you cannot be a powerlifter for ten minutes. I mean you could lie and say you were, but it would probably be pretty clear you were not, so unless you’re the sort of person who enjoys recreational lying, you would probably not want to do that. (If you do like recreational lying, I feel this post is probably communicating little information of value.)3
But if you want to be a chattier person, if you want to feel like somebody who can draw others out of their shell, if you want to be a better listener, if you want to be more interested in other people, if you want to be able to talk about what you do with people who are not your professional peers,4 you can be those things for short periods of time to a person who has no pre-existing idea of who you are. And over time, having built up the skills, you may find you are simply now somebody who is actually those things.
But mostly, it’s fun. There are so many kinds of people! And you never know who has a grandfather who left behind food for the vultures on the lonesome trail.
Not every stranger will want to talk to you. In my experience, it is usually pretty easy to tell when they don’t, because after the initial exchange of “how’s your day” no conversational ball is left floating in the air. There are also places where I personally don’t make the first move, like airplanes, because if I realize I don’t really want to talk to this person it is unfortunate to be in such close proximity for the next couple hours. But I have had nice conversations on airplanes, albeit initiated by others, so it is possible. Usually, these conversations are initiated either about delays or by asking me what I’m reading.
That is, if the other person isn’t free to tell you to go screw yourself, you’re not touching grass.
The Highsmith book you want is The Talented Mr. Ripley, not Strangers on a Train.
Tiptree’s death makes her far and away the most interesting book subject to people, I think. I had this conversation with an esthetician.
I didn't do a lot of hitchhiking when I was younger, but the little I did was amazing in terms of leading to great conversations. I think because there's the added pressure of having brought another person into what is not a public space. I hardly ever remember conversations from buses or plains, but I still remember most of my hitchhiking stories, and a few of those belonging to my friends as well.
I suspect that having so many of our social interactions mediated by money has impaired the full development of our conversational skills. In a society where you actually need to persuade people to do you favors, being able to make them feel good about helping you is a pretty basic life skill.
This would account for a notable difference between the culture of Britain and its former colony, Ireland.
Why do we not ask if the hired hands had bad vibes. Or were simply unpleasant to be around