Jibber jabber

“Hot enough for ya?”

If you want to chip away a little at my soul, that’s probably the question you want to ask me.

There’s small talk, and then there’s minuscule talk. I’ve never been good at it. There are people who can carry on an entire conversation sticking only to topics like weather, kids and sports, and they’ll gab merrily about all three without actually exchanging anything of substance. It’s a pretty admirable skillset, really, a gift unto itself. My mother has it. My father can fake it. But somehow it skipped a generation, and so when someone corners me in an elevator and tells me it’s a real scorcher out there, I never know exactly what to say. When someone states the obvious -- “Dogs sure do bark, don’t they?” -- it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for creativity.

Elevator awkwardness is kind of my forte. And I’m in elevators almost every day, so the fact that this has become an ongoing issue is just one more in a long string of life’s absurdities. Generally, my strategy when I stand next to someone in an elevator is to stare straight ahead and say nothing, sometimes glancing around as though blank walls are somehow immensely interesting. Movements like this are calculated to make me come across as super casual and easy-going. Every so often, though, the person standing next to me ventures to say something, and this is when I start to freak out a little and wish I had the power of invisibility, bestowed to me during some implausible comic book scenario involving an asteroid and a vat of chemicals.

“Sure is windy today, isn’t it?”

As stock conversation-starters go, that one’s pretty common. The possible responses to it are pretty stock, as well. “Yup, sure is.” “Yes, indeed.” “Yeah, it’s pretty bad today.” “Yesterday was so much nicer!”

Society has collectively decided that these are things we all must say to each other. A restless lot, humans aren’t content to be silent when trapped in confined spaces with strangers. So we have our scripts, the familiar dialogue flowing from our tongues with the practiced precision of stage actors. That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. If we have nothing substantive to say to each other, why say anything at all? There’s no reason a quiet elevator should be uncomfortable, unless of course the person standing next to you is muttering to himself about decades-old government conspiracies. In that scenario it might be prudent to mentally review the judo moves you learned in your last self-defense class.

If these moments of forced conversation were limited to elevators, that wouldn’t be so bad. Without the prospect of social fatigue, I can almost see myself sucking up the willpower to say things like “It’s soooo hot, but at least it’s not snowing!” Unfortunately -- for me, anyway -- we find ourselves in these kinds of situations constantly. Sometimes we’re waiting for a receptionist to check someone’s availability, and we cut through a few dead seconds with forced pablum about the paint-by-numbers art on the walls. Or we’re on a professional call and have to wait for someone else to join the line, and we end up jawing with some PR guy in Virginia about what kind of trees they have there.

Or we’re walking down a hall with someone who’s escorting us to a room. These moments are the worst. You’re ambling along trying to think of something to say, but the only thing you and your escort have in common is the hall itself, so a lot of times you make comments so inane you can’t believe they came out of your mouth. “Wow, this is some really nice carpeting.” Ugh. It’s the conversational equivalent of elevator music.

At this point it may be tempting to peg me as standoffish, and I’ll admit to a certain streak of misanthropy. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. I enjoy the company of friends. I revel in long, deep-diving conversations about politics and science, and can riff on inane, esoteric subjects like art-house films and the relative merits of books versus e-readers. Feed me a nerdy topic, like which actor plays the best Batman, and I’ll geek out so long and hard you’ll be rooting around in your saddlebag for a muzzle to shut me the hell up. Like anyone, I’ve got my comfort zones; meet me in one and I’ll come across as normal, or at least normal-adjacent, notwithstanding my tendency to avoid eye contact and relate everything back to Metallica.

Empty pockets of aimless chatter are what get my teeth grinding. If a social moment is pregnant with the expectation of speech, I find it far more effective to give someone a personal compliment; this avoids generic chit-chat in favor of something specific and tangible. Usually it’s not too hard to find something to compliment, and occasionally you’re served up a hanging slider and can belt it into the cheap seats. One time I saw somebody wearing a Rush T-shirt -- Rush is one of the greatest and geekiest rock bands of all time -- and simply said “Nice shirt.” It was a throwaway comment and not at all original, but it started off quite the nerdy conversation about favorite albums, favorite eras, and whether singer Geddy Lee’s high-pitched squeal could in fact shatter an opera glass. Our shared nerdiness bonded us. That’s a conversation with a stranger I can get behind.

Just my luck that I don’t get to make the rules. Society has its norms, and I risk being a pariah if I don’t yield to them -- to some degree. But I reserve the right to salvage what’s left of my sanity, and that means drawing the line at elevators. The best elevator is one that’s empty. In a quiet box, cut off from the world, I can almost find peace.