My grandfather, Harold Vance Hunter, born in 1906, was a sociable fellow. He was widowed early, but enjoyed decades of late-in-life solo travel that was never lonely. His secret, he said, was to always wear a “conversation piece” — something that could spark some banter with an amenable stranger, whether he was on a fireside barstool in a Cornish pub or at a burger joint in Albuquerque.
He might have, for example, twisted a gem-stoned Sigma Fi Epsilon ring onto his pinky when he drove his tangerine Karmann Ghia into a college town, to ensure that when he stopped for a bite someone might recognize the crest and ask what year he’d pledged. He had a collection of European watches — silver-dollar flat, with polished sapphires crowning the stem — that caught people’s attention. He collected football-related belt buckles and tweed scarves in the distinctive Hunter tartan, all unique enough to launch a “Tell me more!” dialogue that could unspool for hours.
In a recent New York Times column, Roger Rosenblatt argues for “The Bigness of Small Talk.” He says, “The most superficial subjects can go surprisingly deep, a phenomenon that has more to do with attitude than with content. The initiation of small talk — how’re you doin’ — means that someone has chosen to break through the carapace of normal self-interest, and is thinking of you, if only briefly. And you, if only briefly, are pleased enough to return the same question.”
My friend Sally once confided that for women, in particular, earrings operate as a kind of secret code, the perfect small-talk hook — a compliment of someone’s style. In the spirit of my dapper granddad, that tiny opening can invite more: “These hoops? I got them on a trip to Barcelona” or “at a little gallery you should visit” — and away the conversation might gallop.
I’ve been teaching college students for three and a half decades, and for most of that time, the minutes before class were filled with a friendly hubbub. Students filed in, thumped down their backpacks, and chatted with those around them about their weekends, the insane reading expectations of the professor (ahem!), or a tv show. That breeze-shooting led to friendships … or more. (Listener, this is how I met my spouse.)
I’ll bet you can guess what happens nowadays before most college classes begin: Hushed silence as everyone bows privately over their phones until the professor clears her throat to launch the lesson. I can’t abide it. And I don’t.
The journalist Max Fisher, in his book, The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired our Minds and our World, cites a study that recorded how often the average American checks their smartphone during a day. What do you think? It’s 150 times, often open to social media. As Fisher says, “we don’t do this because .. [it] makes us happy.” In fact, it’s getting unhooked from phones that gives people “less anxiety, and greater life satisfaction” (27-28).
So: I now come to my classes ten minutes early, and write a conversation-starter on the board: “What’s your favorite comfort food/ TV series/ musical artist, and why?” … anything to get them talking. They know to put their phones away when they walk in the room … and if everyone else is talking, they do, too. That hum of humans humaning is the sound of pluralism in process. In end-of-semester evaluations, students often write, “This is the only class where I made friends.”
The director of the cross-partisan organization, Braver Angels, Mónica Guzmán, encourages us to have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times by inviting dialogues that might lead us to say, “I never thought of it that way.” The hope, she says, is to reweave our social fabric, led by curiosity. Mere “co-existence” isn’t enough, she says, reaching for the Spanish verb, convivir — to live together.
Co-living may not be easy, but it shouldn’t feel like work. I hope you would have asked my grandfather about his tartan scarf, or his hand-chamoised Karmann Ghia. Remembering the delights of connection might be how we puzzle our nation closer to whole.
Music: “Appalachian Spring” by Aaron Copeland
