USA expands to mean "a whole lot of small talk?"

When my high school class had our reunion after thirty years, like many, I too looked very different from how I was when we completed high school.  The appearance with a beard and a balding/greying head was a big difference.  I speak with a strange mix of accents, yes.

But what surprised most was simply that I talked. I conversed. I joked.  Because, they remember me only as a quiet guy, who rarely spoke.

They are not wrong.  I was a quiet guy through the schooling years.

They are not wrong in noticing that I talked, chatted up, and joked.

But, if they had, therefore, assumed that I had become a talkative person, they are wrong.  I am still the same quiet guy, introvert, that I have always been.


It was merely me engaging in amped-up, but genuinely excited, small talk.

America changed me into a small talk person.  Small talk on diverse topics, but without having to arrive at a conclusion.  Not any great discussion of ideas that can trigger a debate.  Just small talk.

When I was new to this country, I was almost always stumped not knowing anything about this small talk business.  It seemed more difficult to understand than the heavy tomes that I was expected to read.  This Harvard Business Review post summarizes it well:

There's nothing small about the role that small talk plays in American professional culture. People from other countries are often surprised at how important small talk is in the U.S. and how naturally and comfortably people seem to do it — with peers, subordinates, men, women, and even with superiors

Of course, small talk plays a very big role in professional environments.  A former colleague in California, Pete, was often surprised with my fluency with all things Americana for me to engage in small talk.  Small talk, too, was something I picked up in graduate school; "I didn't go to school for nothin'," as I jokingly tell students.

The other day, at the grocery store checkout counter, it was small talk time.  "What is the good word today, Rodney?" I asked him.

"I don't know" Rodney replied with a smile.

"Hey, that's exactly what my students also say all the time" I kidded.

It is such small talk on a much wider scale at the reunion that, I think, surprised many of my old classmates.  To a large extent, meeting with classmates after thirty years means that we cannot jump into serious talk anyway.  Well, with some I engaged in serious discussions too.

Many classmates were surprised enough to directly tell me something like "I didn't know you talked this much."  Well, I too didn't know, when I was a student back in India.

Now, after years in the US, I am so much acculturated into the way of life here, that even when in India I get into the small talk mode at stores and with people.  And often I am reminded that I am not in Kansas anymore!  As the HBR piece notes:

In many cultures, it can also be particularly inappropriate to make small talk with strangers or to share any personal information with someone you don't know. America may be one of the only countries in the world where it's common to strike up a personal conversation with a complete stranger.

The US has a culture of its own, for sure.  As a newbie in this country, I didn't even know how to respond to strangers smiling at me or asking me how I was doing.

Finally, the way that Americans ask others how things are going or how they are doing can feel superficial to people from other cultures who are used to providing an actual, elaborated answer to such questions. They might understandably assume that if someone is asking them how they are doing, the person is genuinely interested in the answer, when in the U.S., this may just actually be a ritualized way of greeting that doesn't really actually demand a long answer — and, in fact, a long, elaborated answer to the question of "How's it going?" would likely be inappropriate for most people in the U.S.

Well, after all these years, I have so many variations as responses when people ask me how I am doing.  My favorites--yes, favorites out of my own responses!--include the following:

No clue. Will find out soon!
Can't complain. Even if I did, you wouldn't care anyway!

In the small talk protocol, as if these are all scripted, people typically smile or chuckle and keep going.

I learnt that there is also seasonal and contextual small talk.  Around Thanksgiving or Christmas, for example, the small talk back-and-forth is different from the ones as the Super Bowl nears.

And then there are regional variations.  California always came across as all small talk all the time.  Nothing more than that.  When I was still a Californian, a Jesuit priest who was visiting from New York, remarked that with every visit he never seemed to take the friendly interactions--with the same people--to a higher level of substantive discussions.  To him, every visit was like a Groundhog Day of reliving the same small talk over and over.

'Nuff with the small talk ... time for serious work ;)