Something I learned the other day about being a person: when someone asks you “so anything exciting going on?” they’re usually not literally asking you if anything exciting is going on. More like, it’s an invitation to talk about what is going on in your life right then. Will they be disappointed if you start telling them about your garden? Or what’s going on in your job? You could preface your response with “well it’s not exciting but…” This at least gives them the chance to speak up and specify that they meant they wanted to hear about something explicitly exciting. More times than not, I bet they meant the question as an invitation (even if they don’t see it that way or ever wonder why people ask such questions, it still functions this way), and not as a demand for something exciting. Here someone asks a specific question, but for the general purpose of engaging in conversation.
This makes me think of college. In college, at least for the first two years, I was in an evangelical christian group. Even if you don’t know any evangelical teenagers that religiously attend youth group and bible study every week, you probably already know that any kind of sex before marriage is explicitly forbidden. But in college, people are at the age where they’re starting to pair off and get married, or know people who are doing that. Whenever someone who had been in our bible study the year before would get married, and then come back for a visit afterwards, someone in the group would finally (to me it always felt like we all wanted to know but were too afraid to) ask them, so how’s married life? I always read this as veiling the real question, what is sex like? So here we have the inverse: asking a general question, but for the purpose of asking a specific question without having to ask it explicitly.
I guess what I want to say here is that somewhere along the way I grew out of finding small talk distasteful because I learned how to engage in it. I came to understand that a stranger in the elevator commenting on the windy day isn’t necessarily on a mission to spread the word about the conditions outside. It’s more of an acknowledgment of another human being being nearby. I prefer any acknowledgement no matter how boilerplate or absurd because I would definitely be put off by a stranger who doesn’t so much as turn in my direction when I get in the elevator (maybe turn isn’t the right word, but I’m meaning the least amount of effort that would be received as an acknowledgement that someone else has entered the space). That’s eleven times more awkward than a weather report cause now I’m riding up angry because I would have given a head nod if they had looked in my direction but they didn’t so much as turn towards me.
Besides, you can always increase the day’s absurdity by making a strange comment in response to being reminded just how loud was that storm in the wee hours of the morning: Must be Tuesday! Maybe the person on the other side agrees with you (must be!), then spends the rest of the elevator ride wondering what you meant by that (or not), but you spend the rest of the elevator ride imagining them wondering what you meant knowing you didn’t mean anything by stating that fact, and then wondering about if you had meant something by it, what would you have meant? (I dunno maybe you were referencing Tuesday having some kind of significance in a nursery rhyme like “Monday’s winds are strong and loud, Tuesday’s skies are full of clouds…” or something), smiling and snickering to yourself as quietly as you can. It’s not quite exciting but it doesn’t require any additional small talk to be entertaining!
maybe i’ll have an annual report on being off facebook but let me tell you right now, it’s peaceful in my mind but lonely in my heart. i kind of feel like people have forgotten I exist. i’ve been trying to nurture my relationships (which was the idea of leaving facebook anyway - i didn’t want a third part responsible for maintaining my connections with people), but it’s hard. nobody will tell you to your face whether you’re an unlikable person (or whether they’re just not the right friend for you) but shoutout to all of y’all that are hitting me up on your own and hitting me back when I reach out. i’m glad and grateful you’re still with me.