How to Have A Conversation

Maybe it's because I earned a living as a reporter for many years, but I approach new people as an opportunity to learn. Not just about them, but about the places they have lived, the jobs they have held, and insights they may have about life in general. To that end, even though my reporting days are over I still ask a lot of questions, often coming away smarter or at least more informed. 

This seems to me a decent way to go about living and growing, and also telegraphs my interest in the other person, something that is invaluable in building a new friendship.

Sadly, this is not how most people comport themselves. It's shocking how many people don't give a rat's ass about the person they have right in front of them, instead talking only about themselves and their accomplishments. I'm used to this behavior by now and expect little else, which is why I avoid parties. But sometimes you meet someone who defies all reasonable expectations of pomposity, selfishness and self-aggrandizement. I recently met such a person, and I'm still getting over it.

The woman in question claims to have been (and still be) a psychologist, of all things, which is mind-blowing. At a casual lunch arranged by a mutual friend who thought she and I would "hit it off," mostly because we are both Jewish and the same age, it was all I could do to keep from dumping my Caesar salad upside down on her head, anchovies and all. 

Really, I thought of doing that for almost the whole time we were together, as she nattered on unceasingly about how she was "a very successful and well-known psychologist" and she had written a "very successful best-seller" (nobody ever heard of) and she has a very unique personality --"I'm very different" -- and so doesn't like most people -- who does? -- and how she had a "very successful career as a psychologist" and was "very well-known." (That's not a mistake, I repeated it to give you the flavor of our conversation. Multiply that by ten.)

She proceeded, in stunning detail, to list every place she had ever lived, where she is planning to live in both the immediate and distant future, and how her way of life as a "nomad" is the only way to live. Married for the first time at 48 and childless, she laughingly mocked those people who "actually choose a place to live just to be near their grandchildren," as if they are lunatics.

There was more... so much more. If only I had been getting paid to interview her, it would have been great. Alas, I was not and it was not. Anyway, in order to avoid being immediately despised by other people, just stop talking about yourself for like five minutes and ask them a few questions, like where are you from and what have you done in your life and how do you spend your days, and more like that.

Just a tip.