Small Talk and Handshakes

For those of you who don’t know yet, I drive a semi for a living which means I spend the majority of my days in a truck by myself with only my own thoughts to keep me occupied. So I think.

Today I was actually thinking about what would be a good thing to write about so that I wouldn’t write a boring diary entry. Kinda weird that I’m actually getting into writing in here (especially if you know me), but maybe it’s a kind of therapy. Like the criminal who needs to leave clues at a crime because he wants to get caught. Or maybe I just need a place to dump all the crap from that floats to the surface of my melon.

Anywhose, one thing I do a lot of is observe human behavior. Personally I find humanity in general to be strange and somewhat dumb. Today I noticed something that I’ve noticed before, but today I actually set to pondering it.

Why is it that people feel the need to make small talk? Why do people feel so uncomfortable to just be silent and go about their business around a stranger or a casual acquaintance? It really does intrigue me.

There are lots of places that I go throughout the day where I meet people that I’ve seen many times before, yet we aren’t friends; we’re just people both going about our jobs, but our jobs require us to interact. I honestly can’t count the number of times that, because people have nothing really meaningful to say, they resort to commenting on the weather. In fact, I can think of at least five people off the top of my head who don’t even resort to any verbal foreplay (the meaningless chit-chat that comes between the “Hello” and the weather commentary), as soon as their greeting is done, they pop off about the weather.

“Hi. Dang, it sure is getting cold.”

“Really? Is that why my tongue sticks to this metal pole? Well for crap, I hadn’t noticed that.”

People in general feel very uncomfortable to be doing something alongside someone they don’t know well, or at all, and not be talking about something. In a way I find it a bit funny, but I also think it’s stupid. Why should people find comfort in wasting breath talking about nothing? Does that even count as human interaction? Or is it more like anality? I dunno.

For a long time I used feel compelled to respond to things like this, but over the years I’ve become a bit numb to it. Now, when people do stuff like that, I rarely respond. If I do, it’s usually out of protocol because I’m on the clock and I have to appear to be friendly and people assume that NOT talking about nothing is being unfriendly and cold.

The whole weather thing is just an example, because I know there are plenty of other things that people use as their blanket of protection against uncomfortable silences, but it’s one that I happen to run into many times a day.

Since I’m on the topic of meaningless conversation, what about the people who feel the need to ask “How are you?” or “How’s it going?”

I highly doubt that 99.99% of the people who ask that actually want to hear the truth or even care about the answer you give. What they want to hear is “Good” or “Fine” or something to that effect, because it makes them feel that they’ve done their duty in offering the hand of friendship (or something like that. I don’t frickin know why people do that, but that’s my guess). As with feeling the need to have small talk, I think people have this unconscious sense of protocol that has somehow been drilled into the backs of our heads that makes people ask each other how they’re doing or how “it’s” going.

Can you imagine though if people actually started telling the truth when people ask that? Cause you know that people aren’t really doing good all the time like they say. What would people say? Do people even know how to react if someone says anything below “fine?”

What if everyone began to be honest and if their life was sucking at the moment, told the person who was asking? If my job was sucking for the day and I told someone who asked how “it’s” going, would they care enough to help? Or would they just shut up and not know what to do?

You know, being as how I’m talking about greetings now, I have to bring up something else that I talked to a friend about a few days ago. Here in America (where I am) and in many other parts of the world, people shake hands as a way to greet each other. Now if you just sit and think about it, what the hell does shaking hands do? How does shaking hands suddenly assure people that they’re on good terms? I know we humans look down on dogs for saying “Hello” by sniffing each other’s butts, but is that really all that different from shaking hands?

I wonder who invented the handshake anyways, cause you know someone had to be the first one to do it. Was it a caveman who just felt like grabbing another caveman’s hand, and they enjoyed shaking each other’s extremities so much that it caught on? Or did it come later (it must have cause Judas kissed Jesus, he didn’t shake his hand)? Maybe it was instituted by the Catholic Church as a way for priests to touch people (hehe). I dunno. But I do think handshaking is retarded.

This is enough for now though. I think I’ve dumped enough out here for the time being.

“There’s another world inside of me that you may never see. There are secrets in this life that I can’t hide. Somewhere in this darkness there’s a light that I can’t find. Maybe it’s too far away or maybe I’m just blind…” 3 Doors Down