Polite Conversation

By Alex Allen

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I think it's probably about the age of sixteen when you have to start making polite conversation. Before that, everything was easier. If you didn't want to talk to people, especially people your own age, then you just, well, didn't. You didn't even have to be nice to people, there were kids that went to my secondary school that nobody ever talked to. Ever. There was one girl who I don't think I ever heard speak, I like to think she's got a nice job in a library somewhere now. Maybe she'll surprise me and become the new Carol Vorderman on Countdown, stranger things have happened. Older people worry about making friends more, they worry that once university is over their friend pool will just dry up. Suddenly, there are dinner parties and work outings and polite conversation becomes a part of everyday life. Of course, you have friends at work, but it isn't really as if there's any reason for you to become best friends with everyone. After all, it's not as if you were all brought together through shared interests, you just work together. Still, there are always people at work that want to organise outings and force that friendship, it's every badly written Trouble sitcom, the interaction with people in the office.

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For some reason, whenever you introduce one friend to another, you always feel obliged to provide some sort of introductory line. Usually, what you say associates them with some sort of skill, 'Ben, this is Tom, he's a really good guitarist' for example, almost as if you're trying to sell them as a friend. It's like, oh, in case you were thinking about assembling the new A-Team, my friend Matt, brilliant with computers. Hmmm, well, I'm not really in the market for a friend that likes computers, but if Chris ever moves away from the area then I'll be bear him in mind, I'll just put his name on my back up list. I think we do it because we hope that introductory line might allow a blossoming friendship based on shared interests to occur. It rarely does, in fact there are few things more excruciating than trying to make a conversation over the fact that you both like, say, to play the guitar. Usually, there won't be an actual guitar in the room, so you start talking about hypothetical guitars. Sometimes you won't have heard of the guitar that is being talked about, but because you were introduced as some kind of guitar playing supremo you can't show any weakness concerning your specialist subject. So you just nod along as the other person talks about treble and pickups, making muffled knowledgeable and agreeable sounds. If you think I'm exaggerating this, I was sitting with some of my flatmate's friends when I was out the other night, and was introduced as being 'in PR' even though I've only ever done one internship which was six months ago. The result was a twenty minute conversation with a young entrepreneur that resulted in me taking his business card (if you're reading this and were the owner of that business card, I apologise but I lost it about four minutes after you gave it to me. If it's any consolation, I had no contacts anyway). It's strange, because both people involved in the conversation know what's going on. If there was some kind of socially acceptable way of both parties mutually agreeing to end the conversation without causing offence, they would. It isn't that people are unsociable, it's just that generally that way of people meeting doesn't work. For example, even in a university history seminar, the chances are that other people at that seminar will be similar to you, you've all ended up there because you have a shared interest in history. Therefore there's a reasonable chance of you getting on with other people in that group. It's really just the format of 'you like this, and you like it too, be friends! Go!' that scares people, but I'm sure there are many friendships that blossomed out of this socially conventional friend matchmaking.