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    An Ode To Small Talk

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    LaZeR Infinity
    Small talk serves an important social function by helping to establish connections between strangers and maintain social order. Even brief exchanges of pleasantries like "How are you?" can foster a sense of community. While small talk may seem inconsequential, the author relates an experience where recognizing a Grateful Dead song playing in a UPS truck led to a joyous moment of instant camaraderie with the driver. These small moments of human interaction through small talk can have an outsized positive impact.

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    An Ode To Small Talk

    Uploaded by

    LaZeR Infinity
    128 views1 page
    Small talk serves an important social function by helping to establish connections between strangers and maintain social order. Even brief exchanges of pleasantries like "How are you?" can foster a sense of community. While small talk may seem inconsequential, the author relates an experience where recognizing a Grateful Dead song playing in a UPS truck led to a joyous moment of instant camaraderie with the driver. These small moments of human interaction through small talk can have an outsized positive impact.

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    An Ode to Small Talk

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    Small talk serves an important social function by helping to establish connections between strangers and maintain social order. Even brief exchanges of pleasantries like "How are you?" can foster a sense of community. While small talk may seem inconsequential, the author relates an experience where recognizing a Grateful Dead song playing in a UPS truck led to a joyous moment of instant camaraderie with the driver. These small moments of human interaction through small talk can have an outsized positive impact.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
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    128 views1 page

    An Ode To Small Talk

    Uploaded by

    LaZeR Infinity
    Small talk serves an important social function by helping to establish connections between strangers and maintain social order. Even brief exchanges of pleasantries like "How are you?" can foster a sense of community. While small talk may seem inconsequential, the author relates an experience where recognizing a Grateful Dead song playing in a UPS truck led to a joyous moment of instant camaraderie with the driver. These small moments of human interaction through small talk can have an outsized positive impact.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    An Ode to Small Talk

    By
    James Parker
    The Atlantic

    The correct answer to the question “How are you?” is Not too bad.

    Why? Because it’s all-purpose. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the conditions, Not too
    bad will get you through. In good times it projects a decent pessimism, an Eeyore-ish reluctance
    to get carried away. On an average day it bespeaks a muddling-through modesty. And when
    things are rough, really rough, it becomes a heroic understatement. Best of all, with three
    equally stressed syllables, it gently forestalls further inquiry, because it
    is—basically—meaningless.

    Small talk is rhetoric too. Americans in particular are small-talk artists. They have to be. This is a
    wild country. The most tenuous filaments of consensus and cooperation attach one person to
    the next. So the Have a nice days, the Hot enough for yous, the How ’bout those Metses—they
    serve a vital purpose. Without these emollient little going-nowhere phrases and the momentary
    social contract that they represent, the streets would be a free-for-all, a rodeo of disaster.

    But that’s the negative view. Some of my most radiant interactions with other human beings
    have been fleeting, glancing moments of small talk. It’s an extraordinary thing. A person stands
    before you, unknown, a complete stranger—and the merest everyday speech-morsel can tip
    you headfirst into the blazing void of his or her soul.

    I was out walking the other day when a UPS truck rumbled massively to the curb in front of me.
    As the driver leaped from his cab to make a delivery, I heard music coming out of the truck’s
    speakers—a familiar, weightless strain of blues-rock noodle. There was a certain spacey twinkle
    in the upper registers, a certain flimsiness in the rhythm section … Yes. It had to be. The
    Grateful Dead, in one of their zillion live recordings. And I knew the song. It’s my favorite Dead
    song. “ ‘China Cat Sunflower’?” I said to the UPS guy as he charged back to his truck. A huge
    grin: “You got it, babe!”

    The exchange of energy, the perfect understanding, the freemasonry of Deadhead-ness that
    flashed instantaneously between us, and most of all the honorific babe—I was high as a kite for
    the next 10 minutes, projected skyward on a pure beam of small talk.

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