It’s thought that the qualities in ourselves that we detest are the ones that we detest in others. Me, I have a healthy (or I think so) distain for what’s called small talk – talk that is mundane and fails to lead to any insights.

I can’t say that I’ve gotten any better at tolerating talk about the weather or about illnesses. I am often polite – but after a bit of listening to this jabber, I feel as though my insides are being torched.

I have been known to walk away from such talk – if possible (and I am adept at doing this) and will continue to do this. There have been a few volunteers who babble on but say nothing – I distance myself from there.

But here’s the catch. Everyone has a good story. You just have to be patient and wait for it to be told. Good stories – they connect us with one another on an emotional level. Together we plumb the depths. Good stories allow us to be empathetic, and to share our humanity. (humanity, what a strange word, man in the middle of it ‘n all).

A good story also draws us into the person’s life – as they tell this story we draw and maybe express parallels to our own lives.

I can think of an example, one volunteer – he just babbled on and on about nothing. Eventually he quit working for the book project, to a large part because I distanced myself from him.

I ran into him at an event about a month ago. We sat at the same table, and I feared that he was going to go off on another boring tangent, say about his working for a pizza chain. But no – I knew that he’d taken on a volunteer’s turtle and asked him about it. He then showed me a video of the turtle climbing stairs. He then mentioned that he had rats and showed me a video of them crawling up this upright thing that Anthony made for them.

Anthony continued to talk about his rats for another twenty minutes. And I continued to listen. I guess the subject matter, animals, interested me. And I had lots of questions.

Now Pete, he loves to talk with people and enjoys conversing, small and large talk included. He can also talk large and talk small. There is on his part, no walking away until the conversation is over.

I depend upon him at times to jump in and keep the conversations going. I can then either elect to stay or leave. Sometimes, when I leave, Pete will seek me out and tell me about the conversation and what I missed.

Tomorrow, I think, is going to be a day full of small talk.

Next: 156. 6/8/26: Blah, Blah, Blah