I spent much of last weekend engaging in small talk, a social task I sometimes find a laborious activity.
Maybe that’s just me. Still, last weekend was the Labor Day holiday, so I suppose I should accept the coincidence. I had many opportunities for small talk as was fitting to the occasion.
On Friday, we dropped Luna off at the kennel where she is welcomed with open arms. We chatted with Dan as we led Luna into her rooms for the weekend. Dan cuts my hair as well as Becky’s, so we often have interesting and complicated conversations. But this evening it was chitchat about our weekend schedule and about coordinating our plan for picking up our dog on Sunday.
Early the next morning, Becky, daughter Amanda and I left for Chattanooga, Tennessee, for yet another faraway family wedding. When you come from a large family (both Becky and I do) and your siblings have children, it is a good bet that many times in your life you will be attending weddings of those adult children. This would be the fourth family wedding we have celebrated in the last fourteen months.
Google Maps told us the trip would take six hours. But Google Maps doesn’t need to make restroom stops, or get fuel and snacks. We did, so we pulled into Chattanooga after seven hours of Labor Day Weekend driving. We saw some of the other wedding attendees in the lobby and schmoozed for a bit, then headed to our rooms to prepare for the evening.
It started raining just before five o’clock when the outdoor wedding was scheduled to commence. There didn’t seem to be a Plan B, so it was decided to hold the wedding in the rain. The rain wasn’t too hard, and most people didn’t get too wet. The ceremony wasn’t too long, and it wasn’t long before we were all sloshing into the events center for the reception.
Small talk was tough to hear over the dance music and other activities, but people tried all the same. Family members had come from all over the country to see each other so, by golly, they were going to catch up, visit, palaver, jaw, gossip, and chin-wag until the wee hours, or at least, until 10:30 when we went down to shower the happy couple with bubbles from those little jars with wands. The rain had stopped, so that was nice.
The next morning there was breakfast in a room in the hotel called the “Speakeasy” which was an appropriate place for small talk, I thought. The families had an opportunity to stretch their small talk muscles. I am not much for sports conversation, so my small talk in that area is often microscopic. However, I do enjoy talking about books and, fortunately, the others with whom I found myself at the stand-up table shared my enthusiasm. We had good small conversations, some about large books.
Those who study such things define small talk as “polite conversation about unimportant things.” Well, I’m not sure talking about books is unimportant, but, whatever. They tell us small talk also functions as a useful social lubricant and a “bonding ritual.” We are informed that the need to use small talk in conversation depends on the nature of the relationship. For example, participants in close family relationships often go for long periods in silence.
Hmmm. I didn’t notice too much of that with our family group.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
