Dear Jim,

I’ve been musing on this all day — what fun!

I think what I’ve decided is that what I’m talking about is a mix of emotional labor, lack of creativity, and wasting of time. When I think of small talk and bad gatherings I don’t think of passing conversations with the mail carrier or a new student. I think of meetings and gatherings where I have to force cheer while not really connecting on a deep level.

The epitome of the sort of situations that make me so uncomfortable would be a baby shower for someone I don’t know well — a coworker, perhaps, or a friend’s daughter. Everyone wears pastel dresses and sits on uncomfortable chairs, with enforced smiling for hours, and conversations like, “gosh a lot of rain this spring,” and “can you believe the Bachelorette gave Josh the rose?” and “gee, everyone would be so happy if we could just get rid of the smartphones.” While my face forms a smile-rictus, I get tireder and tireder, and my brain ticks through all the things I should be doing with that time instead.

What I loved about Parker’s book was her questioning of these shopworn habit-style gatherings. When she talks about purpose she isn’t saying that every interchange must be productive. For the baby shower example, she’d say the purpose is to usher a loved one, usually a mother, across the threshold from non-parent to parent, and also to celebrate new life. What a miraculous purpose! Why wear pastel dresses and watch an endless parade of paper and plastic packages be opened? Why not instead, I don’t know, go skinny-dipping in the ocean, have a frank dinner discussion about how becoming a mother is mysteriously both glorious and terrible at the same time, and then light off some crazy fireworks in excitement?

I appreciate that the standard baby shower format must hold some purpose for many people, and that for the reasons you point out, such light conversations can act as social glue. I can intellectually understand why for some people, that is more rewarding than my idea of a rewarding interchange. You’re probably right that introversion/extraversion is oversimplistic, and those sides of ourselves are so sensitive to context. I also suspect based on other conversations with other people that preferred degree of emotional intensity (I like it high) probably plays a role, as does perceptions of time (everything feels like tomorrow to me).

And I DO think part of this is still definitional, because I don’t remember making small talk with you. We talked about brains and Star Trek and book recommendations and the importance of letting people be dicks on social media from time to time and the fate of humanity! That is all very large talk in my mind.

Interesting stuff, in any case.

:) Sarah