Semi-annual Small Talk

No one has ever accused me of being talkative, but occasionally I do find verbalization pleasant, or at least not quite as painful as waterboarding. Semi-annual small talk is perhaps my specialty. When I see the maintenance light come on in my truck or car, I actually look forward to visiting Jim’s Tire and Auto Repair, not because I enjoy forking over hard-earned money, but because Jim is a hardcore Star Wars fan. You would never know it–he is gruff and rather taciturn himself, but if you ask him about Andor or the Mandalorian, watch out. 

“What did you think about the new trailer?” I asked Jim, walking into the tire shop lobby. I suspect if anybody else asked him this question, Jim would automatically assume they’re talking about a trailer with wheels, like a utility trailer, but Jim grinned and knew exactly what I was talking about without further clarification.

“It was great to see the Razor Crest again,” Jim said, and off we’re conversing about the intricacies of The Mandalorian and Grogu trailer, picking up our Star Wars small talk where we left off six months ago when I last had my tires rotated and oil changed. His son, who works the cash register, has the same stout and hulking stature of Jim, only with more hair. Jim the younger reached out and plopped his arm on the counter. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a new tattoo of the Millennium Falcon. These are my people–tattooed stout mechanically-inclined men who love Star Wars. On second thought, I may just be a man who loves Star Wars, but the point is we have something in common, something to talk about. 

I have a similar repartee with my dental hygienist. I have been going to Faith for over ten years, and for the first five years our small talk was rather minimal, until she and her husband had their first and only child in the middle of the pandemic, a few months after we had Thomas.

We connect because we’re both older parents to an only child and mostly we compare notes on our children because we have no other children to compare notes on. Last I left her, six months ago, they were struggling with a similar conundrum.

“Which school did you go with?” I asked, and immediately we picked up the conversation where we left off, when they were struggling with whether to send their child to a local public or charter school, just like we were. Admittedly, the conversation is a bit one-sided–it’s hard to form complete sentences when you’re having tartar scraped off your teeth–but she explained their decision to send their child to their local public school, and I grunted that that’s what we decided, as well. 

“How does his school do sight words?” she asked, giving me a brief respite to form sentences. And soon we’re talking about the magical process of watching our children learn to read. 

Parenting is such a fleeting and elusive experience. When you’re in the middle of sleep deprivation or your toddler’s terrible tantrum, it feels as if this will be a scarring experience, seared in your memory forever, but how quickly those memories fade. Sometimes I find myself talking to new parents–trying to remember those sleepless nights just a few years ago–but the instant connection isn’t quite there because memories have a half-life and erode. The disconnect of time arises, when one person is talking of the past and one the present.

But the dental hygienist and I have something major in common. Our only children have both started kindergarten, are both learning to read and write, and are both growing up before our eyes, in similar ways and at the same time. Small talk flows freely, even if my mouth is immobilized.