Talking to Strangers

Today I was telling my therapist about how I recently started a conversation Friday before last with someone I didn't know at a meeting of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and, a few days later, with the worker at the station next to me on a temporary job. For most of my life I've had no habit whatever of making small talk -- even saw it as pointless and stupid, not comprehending (or being willing to acknowledge) its importance for making social connections -- yet in this second case, knowing of nothing we had in common, I simply opened by turning to her and asking, "So, what do you do for fun?" And we had a reasonably interesting exchange for the next couple minutes, even though our only common interest was singing.

But a couple hours after the appointment, I did myself a little better yet by saying "Good afternoon" to someone with whom all I had in common was that we were crossing the same street in the direction of the same bus stop. And it turned out that, once prompted by this greeting, she had things she felt like sharing. In fact, even though she wasn't going where I was (PRO-ACT), she'd just been receiving one of the same kinds of training that they plug people into. So that conversation was quite interesting too.

But most rewarding for me was the simple fact that I was able to take these initiatives at all, when for decades I virtually never thought of doing so, and when I did was usually too inhibited by anxiety to actually try it.