“Nice day!”

I bite my tongue to stop from saying “well done, you should definitely look into being a meteorologist – you’re a natural!”

“Well now, isn’t he the little handful” to a stressed mom dealing with a toddler in full meltdown.

“Why yes, captain obvious, your methods of observation are second to none”

Or maybe you’re enjoying an ice cream during a mid day stroll, and someone says

“Well that looks tasty!”

“Um, no, they only had vegetable flavors today, this is lima bean” (heavy eye roll for effect)

To that I say, we need to practice leaning into silence – please.

Silence is great! Ask any frequent flyer. First rule of finding your seat is to not make eye contact with the person sitting next to you. If they ask a question, open your book first, take your time, look at them and with a half smile, nod, and quickly put your nose back into your book. (and yes, you either have a book, iPad or notebook if you are a frequent flyer – guaranteed.)

Before you consider me antisocial, please consider that I, personally, do not believe that I am. I believe in good, solid conversations versus banal, cliche’d offerings. I love to engage with someone who shares similar interests, or current events (political conversations excluded as they are impossible to navigate these days).

I even gave up my “no talk” flight rule once or twice. And while it’s a pretty risky thing to attempt, I have done it once or twice after carefully sizing up my seat mate.

On one such occasion, (it was more than ten years ago) it was a pretty short flight (just under two hours) and my seat mate on this day was reading a worn copy of “David Copperfield” and I simply said – “how many times” and he quickly responded “more than twenty” and we chatted for about 30 minutes about the brilliance of Dickens, our favorite stories, best lines remembered and recited, etc. and when we exhausted that chat, we each burrowed back into our books, and when our flight ended we politely said good bye before deplaning.

I think the average person deplores the common weather-greeting, or obvious observations. They are just really lazy attempts at friendliness and should be called out for what it is – “small-brain” talk. If you would argue that it is a conversation starter, I heartily disagree – in fact, for me, it is a conversation ender. If you really want to speak to someone, put a little effort into it. A very small, but deep conversation will always win out and leave a lasting impression. And truly, if you do decide to go the “weather” route, I won’t be unkind, but I won’t engage either, I will more than likely just smile and nod.