hi, my name is dust...

What's your name?
Where do you work?
Have you lived in the area a while?
Do you have a family?

In my life I have noticed two types of people when dealing with small talk. One type of person excels once the typical initial small talk topics are exhausted and one doesn't. I know there are in actuality more than two types of people in the world, but for my purposes today there are only two. In my experience I have actually been both types of people, and probably the first more than the last, so I hope this doesn't come across as terrifically biased.

The first type of person is the type who wants to talk about only his or her main five or six topics. If you are unable to talk to this person about one of those topics the conversation will not last longer than three minutes. This is definitely something I battle with. I have topics that I want to discuss and I will often force the issue on people who could care less. Lately, all I have talked about is school. Soon all I will talk about is the baby. Who is looking forward to that?

The second type of person can show genuine interest in what just about anyone has to say either because that person is either incredibly well-rounded or because that person cares that others don't feel left out. I continually aspire to be this type of person. This is especially the case when I catch myself ranting about a pet topic for an extended period of time. I try to know a little bit about everything so that I can talk to just about anyone on one of their pet topics for at least five minutes, but in most cases I can't always go much further.

I have noticed that one way around the problem of knowing pet topics is allowing the other person to talk about themselves. Everyone likes talking about himself or herself. When I do that I have a habit of interrupting the other person when I decide that it's time to talk about me. I don't think there are many people who aren't thinking about what they are going to say about themselves while they are listening to someone else give a virtual autobiography.

The problem I have is that I get the most satisfaction now when I talk about what I want to talk about, but I feel better about myself later when I have talked to someone about what they wanted to talk about. Even when I am selfish I can't win.