Category: anti-humor

Conquering Casual Conversation

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“Talk,” is one of the many pieces of advice I would give my younger self if I could go back in time, “and not every conversation has to involve deep, impactful, and important subjects. Some of the times, you just talk for the pure enjoyment of talking to people. Listeners don’t have to be cool or beautiful either. They can be old, young, smart, dumb, boring and fascinating. Talk about matters consequential and inconsequential. If we talk long enough, we might find, we just might find, that the boring are far more interesting than the interesting.”

The musicians told me to avoid the “chitter-chatter, chitter,-chatter, chitter-chatter ‘bout schmatta, schmatta, schmatta”. The movies told me to be the quiet, mysterious type everyone looks to for reaction. They told me if I wanted elusive charisma, I should be silent.

“Don’t listen to them,” The Ghost of Present Rilaly would whisper into my ear. “Silence doesn’t make you look cool. Silence makes you look silent.” Silence lands you in the corner of the room not knowing what to do with your hands. No one remembers you when you are silent.

There’s a reason former athletes and the beautiful are silent. They don’t have a lot to offer.

“How do you know so much about such stupid stuff?” the beautiful might ask. If we’re bold enough to answer, they’ll say, “Huh, well I was much too busy getting busy in high school to learn about such nonsense.” If we’re then bold enough to remind them that high school was a long time ago, we’ll realize that that persona we tried so hard to attain didn’t accomplish half of what we thought it would. “You think everyone is looking at the guy shaking his head in the corner? Nobody remembers that. It might seem so pointless in the beginning, but developing the skills necessary to talk about absolute nonsense actually adds something to life.”

1) Learn how to be superficial. My best friend enjoyed talking to people. I found that so confusing that I was embarrassed to be around him at times. When he talked to a fella, I had no problem with it. When he started up a conversation with a young woman, I kind of envied it, but this guy would talk with old people about old people stuff. Their conversations were absolute nonsense. He didn’t care, and he was having one hell of a good time doing it. I thought he was a fraud, and when I called him out on it, do you want to know what he said? He had the audacity to say, “I was enjoying myself.”

“Where’s your integrity my man?” I asked him.

“I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “I just want to have a good time.”

“It goes against code,” I said, in whatever terminology I used at the time. He didn’t care. He didn’t tell me he didn’t care. He wanted to be cool, like Matt Dillon, and all that, but some part of him enjoyed the art of conversation so much that he couldn’t control himself. When some old man got angry about the cost of a Hershey’s chocolate bar, my friend turned to him and encouraged the rant. What? Why? When an old person starts in you’re supposed to walk away. When he first started doing it, I thought it was a bit. I thought he was trying to pull a thread on the old man to get him going. After numerous interactions of this sort, I realized my best friend was respectful and deferential. He just enjoyed talking to people of all stripes. He wasn’t smarter than me, and he wasn’t one of those types who knows a little bit of something about everything. He just knew how to talk to people. He learned how to put the important, artistic personae aside and tap into the superficial side to just talk to whomever happened to be near him in the moment.

It took me a long time to see that my friend might be onto something. It took a job where my employer forced me to engage with customers that I realized I could and should tap into my superficial side. I got all tied up in the shoe-gazing, grunge virtue that suggested you were all a bunch of fakes, and I was living real. As usual, when you accuse someone else of being fake too often, it’s usually because you are. I was a nice Midwestern kid trying to pretend like I was a Northwestern rock star. At that point in my life, I still believed that the artistic persona was an important one to maintain, but I learned to maintain that persona while tapping into a superficial side. I did that to remain an employee with high scores, but I learned to tap into that persona in my off work hours too, and I found that I had a lot more fun in life doing so.

2) Be confident. I know this is easier said than done. Most of us are insecure, and we all have moments when we’re not sure of ourselves. If most of us are unsure of ourselves, then most of us are unsure of ourselves. Unless our listener was an athlete or a beautiful woman in high school, chances are they’re as uncomfortable in their skin as we are. The trick is spotting it. I was on a date with an incredibly beautiful woman. I was as nervous and unsure of myself as ever. I pulled out of the parking lot and circled back. I wanted to back out. When I finally stood before her, she blushed. My confidence soared as I realized she was as nervous as I was. It taught me the simple and emboldening fact that most people are as nervous about meeting new people as we are. If we watch them long enough, we’ll spot it. It might be a blush, a stutter, or an uncomfortable look away, but everyone has a tic of some sort. If we’re observant, we’ll see something that informs us that most people are just as inferior as we are. They’re just normal people living normal lives, and they enjoy engaging in casual conversation.

3) Pretend to be interested in what they have to say. How often are we so interested in being interesting that we forget to be interested? Conversations are a two-way street, and if we’re able to convince them that we’re interested in what they have to say, we’ll receive a return on our investment. One of our favorite conversation topics is us, and when we show them we’re interested in them, they are going to be more interested in us. One of the keys to this is to avoid testing it out too early. If we begin speaking too early, their smile fades, they become distracted by anything and everything around them, and the minute we finish speaking, they start in again. Displaying an acute focus in what another person has to say is one key to making friends, but some might find our interest so intoxicating that they’ll want to compound it without a return on our investment. We can deal with that element later, if the two of us develop a sustained friendship, but if our goal is to make more friends, the key is to overwhelm them with interest.

One thing we covet more than being interesting is being funny. Some people aren’t funny, but if we want to be friends with them laughter is the best medicine. No matter how common or dumb their joke is, laugh. Laugh about how dumb their joke is if that’s what it takes. Laugh if they messed the joke up. They won’t know why we’re laughing if we do it right. If we do it right, we’ll find them coming up to us with their jokes over and over again. If we do it right often enough, we could become their go-to person with their jokes.

If you’re anything like me, when you meet someone new for the first time, you’re so insecure and nervous that the go-to is to try to be so over-the-top interesting and funny that you forget to be interested in what they have to say.  I write pretend we’re interested, because if we pretend well enough and long enough we might accidentally convince ourselves that we are interested.

4) Tell self-deprecating humor, but don’t overdo it. If something works, and self-deprecating humor almost always does, we have a tendency to do until it doesn’t. There is a tipping point, however, where we might accidentally affect their impression of us. Everyone loves the “But what do I know, I’m a dummy” conclusion to a provocative thought. If we do that too often, though, they might walk away thinking we’re dumb. Why wouldn’t they, it was the impression we gave them one too many times.

5) Find a Through Line. One of the many reasons the show Seinfeld was so popular is that nonsense is funny and fun. Some of the best friendships I have in life were based on nonsense. Example, Michael had a habit of making a drink face before he even reached for his can of soda. He reached out for the soda with an ‘O’ already on his face. He grabbed the bottle and inserted its contents into the ‘O’. I never knew we had a drink face, until I met Michael. I never thought about the proper timing of a drink face, until I met him.

“Michael, you need to wait until the drink is almost on your face before you make a drink ‘O’,” I said. “You make your drink faces way too early.”

“Women don’t like a man who makes a drink face too early,” Cole added. “It freaks them out.” A lifelong friendship between Cole and I was born that day.

Another friend and I loved the comedic stylings of Don Knotts, and we both hated caramel apples, because we hated the feeling of caramel on our nose. On that note, another bonding agent can be hating the same things. You both might hate beets, accidentally stepping in puddles, or people who make old man sounds when they sit. Whatever the case, there’s always some nonsense you can bond over. It’s your job to find it.

6a) Be a Great Listener. Some suggest that listening is a lost art. I’d argue that it never was. I’d argue that people in Aristotle’s era, Shakespeare’s, and every just about every dot in human history had the same complaint about human nature. “Nobody listens to anybody anymore.” Are you listening to people when you say that? I’ve been called a great listener in enough venues that I’m starting to think it’s true. I am fascinated by the people around me, and why they think what they do, and I have to tell you that it’s a great way to make friends. The one problem with being a great listener is when you’re known as a great listener, people don’t want you to talk. They much prefer that you listen to them, be fascinated with them, and find them funny. As I’ve written throughout this piece, those of us seeking to make friends will have to work through this in their own way, but if we lay the foundation of being a great listener people will be drawn to us.

6b) Ask Active Listening Questions. Asking active listening questions not only prompts the speaker to launch or continue, it makes them feel interesting. There are few things people enjoy more than an active listening question about the story they’re telling. The questions we ask are relative to their conversation, but some of the times, a simple “Why did you do that again?” can do wonders to show we’re not just following along and that we’re interested, but that we want to hear more. Some listening prompts might feel so obvious to be almost stupid, but soon after we drop them, the speaker picks the ball up and eagerly runs with it. As I wrote earlier, people love it when we make them feel interesting, and they might love being funny more, but the final leg of my version of making friends and influencing people might endear the speaker to you more than any other. If we phrase our question just so, it makes them feel like your resident expert on the subject in question. Active listening prompts not only shows that you’re listening it suggests that you trust that they know the truth of the matter.

These little tidbits seem so simple that they couldn’t possibly work, and they may not. As someone who has, at times, suffered from situational stage fright, because I wanted to be more entertaining, funnier than everyone else in the room, and so over-the-top everything else, I realized that I had a tendency to lock myself up by over-complicating the situation before me. Some of the times, these situations are complicated and tough to read, but some of the times they’re relatively simple. Getting a read on conversations can be similar to making reads in sports. Some of the times, depending on the level of competition, we can win a game all by ourselves, but most of the time, we damage our team’s chance of victory by trying to do too much. When we experience the latter, we learn to let the game come to us. It’s all confusing and situational, and the best advice, for anyone who asks the five questions regarding how to implement them, comes from the immortal lyrics from You’re the One that I Want by John Farrar, for the movie Grease: “Feel your way.”

Fighting Coyotes

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“I had a mean case of the coyotes,” Riley Frandsen said to explain his unorthodox, yet natural means of protecting his property. I didn’t need a guide or interpreter to tell me what that meant, but Riley was so stacked with anger and frustration that I felt compelled to provide him a launching point:

“What does that mean?”  

“They were going to the bathroom in my yard, all over my yard. It was so disgusting. They ripped my garbage apart and threw it everywhere, and they were scaring the hell out of Murphy,” Riley said, stressing the latter point as if it was the most important. “Murphy, here, was afraid of going out in the backyard,” he added patting his nearly 100lb. setter while holding my gaze. “I’m serious. When he left this little patio, he did so only to go to the bathroom, and then he wanted back in quick. He got to the point that he was going on the patio, because, I think, he didn’t want to leave the lighted area. He used to love the backyard, staying out for hours, running around, barking at non-existent matters, like any good dog will. Then it was, one to two minutes, and he’s scratching at the door to get back in. It’s sad is what it was.”       

I wasn’t paying too much attention. I’m normally a pretty decent listener, but a story about a man living in a relatively remote location, having problems with coyotes, didn’t captivate my attention. I had a whopper of an unrelated story all locked and loaded, and I couldn’t wait to start it. As such, I was committing the mortal sin of all good listeners: I was waiting for him to finish his story, so I could start mine. 

“What does a man do when coyotes start peeing all over his land?” Riley asked himself when I forgot to ask. “You pee right back is what you do. You reclaim your land.” If I was rudely half-listening up to that point, those lines brought me back in. My story was gone.

“You pee right back?” I asked, guessing where he was headed, but I wanted to hear him say it. “What does that mean?”

“How does a dog mark their territory?” Riley asked. “They urinate on it, right? They were marking my territory as their own, and I didn’t know where they were marking, of course, but they obviously did such a thorough job on my lawn that my buddy, Murphy, was afraid to leave the patio after a while. So, I started urinating back, around the perimeter of my land, as a way of taking my land back.

“So, anytime you have to pee, you run out here and do it on your lawn?”I asked

“I started out doing that,” he said, “but I did some research on it, and experts say that morning urine is the most concentrated and potent.” 

“I’ve also heard that beer urine is some of the most concentrated and potent,” I said. “Is that true?” 

“I wouldn’t know, because I have no control group … My morning urine has had at least some beer in it since I was fifteen. And to answer the question every one else asks, I have to do it again after every rain.” As Riley and I went silent, with a beer in hand, looking out at Riley’s backyard, I broke:

“I am sorry. I know this isn’t funny, but it kind of is.”

“Oh, I know it is,” he admitted with a smile. “I’ve taken this story into town, and they laugh just as hard as you do, because it’s funny, but I’ve tried everything as you can see. I put up that privacy fence, an eight-foot privacy fence, and I saw one jump it one night, scared the hell out of me. I grabbed my rifle and scared it off, and guess what he did. He jumped it again a couple nights later. They’re not scared off by gunshot, not long-term anyway. They’ve not afraid of motion detection lights, and the name brand coyote repellents don’t scare them off either, not long-term. Nothing did, until I began marking my territory. I have to protect my dog, and my property right? I see it as marking my territory in the way any other animal would. I see it as informing them that this is my land in their language, and they respond better to that message than any of the other ones I tried. I don’t know why it works so well, but I think it has something to do with their fear of humans. Our urine is also very high in ammonia, which most animals hate. I still hear them, off in the distance, but I haven’t seen them once since I started doing this. They appear to consider the smell unbearable. It is an olfactory repellent to most mid-level predators. It can also be used as a pesticide. The scent of human urine can be used to confuse and deter rabbits, squirrels, and unintelligent people.

“Not all predators are repelled by the scent of human urine however,” he continued in a matter-of-fact manner, as we sipped on his beer. “The debate on whether bears are detracted or attracted to human urine is ongoing. Some say larger bears, like grizzlies, might actually approach a camp lined with pee that campers put there to detract bears. They say that bears now so associate humans with food that any sign of humans will attract desperately hungry bears, and they know the scent of our urine. Others claim that bears are naturally curious creatures, and the smell is so foreign to them that they investigate. They’re just in our campsite to see what the smell is, in other words, but when we start screaming and running away, their other instincts and impulses cause them to do the things they do to us. 

“Reindeer, apparently, go nuts for our pee,” he continued. “And yes, I did some research on that too. I didn’t specifically search this out, but it was an offshoot of an offshoot, a rabbit hole that I followed, until I ended up learning that reindeer have a natural salt-deficiency, and our urine is high in salt, so they crave it, like we do Ruffles. The Inupiat people of Alaska found that all they have to do is pee in a reindeer trap, and they’ll have a nice meal at the end of the night. Imagine all of the trial and error that went into that finding. The Tozhu people of Tuva in Russia like to keep reindeer around for whatever reason. I assume they occasionally kill and eat them, but they’ve found that if they offer a reindeer a bowl of urine every once in a while, the reindeer will hang around their homes, waiting for the next bowl to arrive. The Tozhu say that the salt-deficient reindeer crave our urine so much that they’ve learned our patterns, and when they see a man who they think is about to pee they will all rush up on him and jockey for pole position, for lack of a better term.

“I know it’s funny,” he said. “I knew that before I told my neighbor, who was trying everything he could think up to free his home from the coyote invasion. He thought it was hilarious, and he told everyone he knows, and I know they were all laughing their heads off, but you know what happened don’t you? You know the end of this story don’t you? You can see it coming. That’s right, they kept laughing at the image of me peeing around my property line while they went through all of the prescribed fixes, and now everyone in town is peeing out their own property line. It’s funny, and it’s the only thing that works.” 

I Give You Permission to Read This 

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“We have two choices in our culture today,” the “theys” who appear on our devices tell us. “We can either feel guilty about doing what we do, or we can give ourselves permission to do them.” The only asterisk in this Faustian Dilemma is celebrital dispensation. Similar to Papal Dispensation, if a celebrity says, or more importantly wears, something on the red carpet, it gives us commoners the permission to be who we are, “who we really are.” To listen to the theys of celebrity adoration, celebrital dispensation is far more powerful than Papal Dispensation in that it doesn’t just offer a specific relaxation of rules in one particular case, it offers us a wholesale abrogation of rules of social decorum, social contracts, moral and ethical principles, and presumably constitutions and foundational documents. The theoretical extension of the rules and policies of celebrital dispensation are not clear, but from what the theys suggest, a song lyric, a line in a movie or show, and any dietary decision celebrities bestow upon us can lead us to the brink of a guilt-free life.

In order for the celebrital dispensation to have power, however, we have to violate a special tenet permission-oriented types have embedded in their personal constitution: Thou shalt not grant another power over one’s life. Aren’t we all supposed to be self-empowered? Aren’t we all supposed to say, “I’m not going to give you that power over me.” Isn’t it all about autonomy, independence and strength to achieve comfort? It depends, and it’s conditional. If the celebrity is hot, superficially and/or professionally, they don’t just wield power in Billboard or the box office, they can influence our daily lives. 

Is this all a collective wink-and-a-nod joke, I missed, or does the woman I see twerking on stage in a corseted bodysuit draped with strands of silver fabric, over-the-knee fringe boots wield as much power over her congregation as the Pope does his? How many successful albums, movies, and TV shows does a person have to have before they can start granting us permission on how to live our lives, and what happens if her next album doesn’t fare as well? Does her sway over the culture ebb and flow with sales, and do we need to keep a ledger on how much power a celebrity wields, before giving them permission to give us permission? How beautiful, handsome, funny, or serious do they have to be before they’re allowed to grant us permission to put a little cheese on our broccoli before eating it? What happens when they eventually age out of their beauty and/or handsomeness, do they grant us permission to age, or do their powers diminish? It probably depends on how gracefully they age. Is there a bottom line qualifier they must continually meet before we continue to grant them ourselves permission to grant them permission to grant us permission to do what we want to do?

***

“So, you don’t just do something or avoid doing it?” is a question I ask of those who seek and grant permission to themselves. “So, you don’t just do something or avoid doing it?” is a question I ask of those who seek and grant permission to themselves. “You add the extra step of asking yourself permission first before doing it?” If that’s the case, the logical conclusion is that there’s another part of us that grants permission. Is that other part of us ruling in a fair, objective, and unbiased manner? Are all of our rulings always reached with our best interests in mind? If you commit to a regular practice of asking yourself permission to do things, how often do you say no? Has your rejection ever surprised you? If so, how did you react? Did you disagree with the basis of your judgement so much that it frustrated you, because you thought you didn’t consider some of the mitigating factors in your request? Did you ever end up eating that piece of chocolate cake regardless of the judgment? We’ve all been subject to unfair, foul, and draconian rulings from the various authority figures in our lives, and we’ve all rebelled against them accordingly. Have you ever eaten that piece of chocolate cake regardless if permission was granted or not, and how did that affect your relationship with yourself going forward? Have you ever stopped asking yourself permission for a time and just did it, because you began to believe that you could be a bit of a tyrant at times, and do you adjust some of your behaviors in the hopes that you might notice a run of good behavior that deserved some reward? You know you’ve been good, but have you had this feeling that you didn’t notice it, and you feel that you should start rewarding yourself with some chocolate cake here and there, until you start acting up again?”  

One definition of giving yourself permission involves the practice of allowing “You to disconnect WHO you are from your opinions, ideas and practices. Instead, placing that identity in your values. As long as you are acting in line with your core values, it opens up space to be wrong about decisions in the past, and how you will choose to translate your values in the future, without losing sight of your personal integrity or ability to be 100% whole and worthy.” 

If I ever fall prey to this nonsense, I know my first series of layoffs will involve middle management, as I will know, without poring through the numbers, that I’m probably overstaffed.  

***  

“I have so earned this,” we say as we lower onto a piece of soft and juicy chocolate cake, “and I deserve a reward.” Is a piece of chocolate cake ever that rewarding? How long does that sense of reward last? Do we go for another piece to reward ourselves more when we’ve been especially good? No, because that might prove punishing. The single piece of chocolate cake represents a reward at the end of the maze of good and healthy living, and we always announce our path to it? “I’ve been good.” 

I guess I’m a stranger in a strange land, because I just eat the piece of chocolate cake, or I don’t. I make decisions without disconnecting WHO I am from my opinions, ideas and practices. There are no trumpets in my land, signaling a dietary path that has been a quality one up to this point, or one that is so bad that I don’t dare approach the bench. 

We let our trumpets blare, because we want external validation and societal validation. Somewhere along the way, we glommed onto the complicated world of self-acceptance and self-actualization, and the rise of self-help literature, social media, and mental health awareness tangled and mangled this into people talking about their personal struggles and growth journeys, until we started seeking permission and granting it to ourselves based on past and present behaviors. 

“I am refraining from eating that piece of soft and juicy chocolate, because I’m on a diet.” We say this even though no one brought it up, and some part of us knows that no one cares, one way or another, but we want someone else to validate our discipline. Even a lifted eyebrow will do. Eating that single piece of soft and juicy chocolate cake gives us a naughty violation to punctuate the streak of good and healthy living that no one cared about when it went live. These are all decisions and choices we make, and they’re all fine, but how many times have we gone a solid month without a slice of chocolate cake? “Yeah, I deserve a reward for that.” What’s the difference between deserve and earn? Who cares, let me have cake. 

When we involve ourselves in the idea of granting permission to ourselves, I think there’s a super-secret part of us that kind of misses having a controlling authority in our lives. “I can’t wait until I’m an adult,” kids often say, “because I’ll then get to finally do everything I want to do.” We all know that there is a psychological push and pull to authority in our youth, as we push back on authoritative constraints, until they’re not there. When they’re not there, we feel the need for borders and guidance in a strange way that makes us feel uncomfortable. We didn’t miss it in our 20s, because we were all about luxuriating in the newfound powers of freedom of adulthood that can feel so fresh and liberating. When we hit our 30s, the idea of freedom became more established, routine, and a little boring, and if we lived to our 40s, we became the powers that be. No one notices when the idea of unadulterated freedom begins to wear off, but we eventually start to take it for granted, and we begin to miss the rewards and punishments that flowed from authoritarian control, so we began establishing our own. 

The logical response to those who deserve a reward is do they ever punish themselves for bad living? Have you ever tried canned beets? If not, then you don’t truly know the extent of quality punishments. WebMD.com suggests that beets “Don’t just reduce inflammation, they also improve heart health. The nitrates in beets have been shown to reduce high blood pressure. Beets are also naturally low in cholesterol and fat, which makes them a good option for people concerned about heart disease or stroke.” Are beets a quality punishment we sentence we pass down for falling off track regarding good and healthy living? Why else would someone eat a beet? If someone told me that they granted themselves permission to eat a piece of chocolate cake, because “I deserve it,” I would ignore them as much as I ignore anyone who publicly grants themselves permission to do anything. If however, they added, “I just ate a whole can of those wet, slimy vegetables,” I might consider my own form of a one-time dispensation. 

“Did they have that purplish color that comes from betalain pigments?”

“Yes.”

“Today, I tell you,” I would say with a permissive wave of my hand, “that you shall enjoy paradise.”

I realize that granting ourselves permission to do what we want to do is not some kind of new-age novelty, as the research suggests this practice has gone through a long and winding road. As a young ‘un who received unprecedented freedoms, unprecedented among my peers, perhaps I went through the traditional push and pull relationship with authority prematurely, but I don’t understand the unnecessarily complicated, and very public, steps some people include in their decision-making process. I don’t understand the process of inventing an imaginary, controlling authority to adhere to, abide by, and rebel against. Perhaps, it has something to do with filling a void that nature forced me to fill so early on that I don’t understand others struggle with it. 

I also don’t understand turning to celebrities to grant us permission to do things, unless it’s an admission on our part that we don’t have the confidence necessary to fill that void, because we fear our rulings, on consequential, pressing matters, are not as objective as we previously thought. To fill that void, we turn to the uncommonly attractive types who attract fame and fortune for some kind of authority on the way to live. Yet, if we were to hold them to the same standard we hold ourselves, we’d find they’re just making it up as they go along too. They do look beautiful doing it though, and we cannot deny that, but does that give us permission to look beautiful while we’re doing it too? If that ever happens to, or for me, I hope someone will come along and explain to me what just happened.