What Do You Say?

The other day at work there was a young kid hanging around the cash register admiring a Homer Simpson key chain; he knew a lot about Homer, as he was spouting scores of lines from The Simpsons while his parents idly shopped nearby. Finally, like one would think Marge Simpson would do one of these days, the kid got tired of Homer and propped his little elbows up on the counter and looked at me. "What'dya say?" I asked. The kid looked at me and said, "Thank you," with a hint of a questioning inflection. "That's a good one," I replied. "Please?" "Another ace in the hole." "You're welcome?" Now for some reason, mainly because the kid seemed so Simpson-literate, I hadn't expected him, who was seven or eight, I'd guess, to take so literally in the adult-to-child prompt manner my question about what he had to say. "How about, 'Okay, I'll eat my spinach now'?" I offered. The kid thought for a second. "I don't say that too much." As if any self-respecting person under the age of fifty does.

It got me thinking about those conversational calisthenics we utilize all the time to recognize another human being's presence and open the door to possible conversation. How's it goin'? Howya doin'? What's up? Hey. Usually these are nothing more than empty calisthenics, verbal stretches, with no intended further activity; the common response is yet another one--"What do you say?" "Hey, how's it goin'"--as the two people go their separate ways, like the proverbial ships passing in the night (as opposed to stopping and actually having a conversation, a gam, as Melville so majestically digressed about in Moby-Dick, where the ships would drop anchor side-by-side, exchange captains and first mates, and spill beans for a couple hours; imagine the response if, after exchanging hollow Howya doin's and What's up's you grabbed the other person and said, "Hey, not so fast, let's gam awhile"--a slap in the face, probably). Which is all fine, merely exchanging a verbal stretch or two--who doesn't appreciate his or her presence to be acknowledged? What throws you for a loop, though, is when the person actually takes seriously your hollow, merely stretching here, question. I mean isn't the question, "Howya doin'?" meant to be a simple either/or question--fine or crappy--and not some higher degree's oral exam? I once worked with somebody who invariably reacted to my rather hollow, but still humane, "Howya doin'?" question with a hesitation and actual thought that was physically apparent. "Well," she'd begin, twisting her head this way and that way and rubbing her chin, obviously assessing her eventual reply as if I had asked her her opinion on the current situation in the Middle East--all the while as I was trying to charge full speed ahead toward the horizon and leave her in my wake--"actually, I'm not doing all that well." Drop anchor, Dan, damn.

Worse than the literalists, when it comes to responding to conversational calisthenics, are the fey ironic-literalists, the people who quickly reply to your meaningless "What's up?" with, "the sky," or "the rent." Those people need to be slapped.

My two favorite conversational calisthenics partners were two unique guys. One was a stocky, perpetually cheerful, though not cloyingly so, co-worker who used to greet you with a jovial "Howdy howdy" all the time. You couldn't help but smile and feel worthy to be in his presence. The other was an old Jesuit Brother who always answered anyone's "How are you doin', Brother?" with a wizened but happy, "Breathing in and breathing out" (until one day he breathed out and never breathed in again; which reminds of his antithesis, a tiny, wiry Brother who was always muttering and angry about something; the story goes that one day, curious like the rest of us, someone asked the cantankerous man of the cloth why he had joined his religious order; as elevator doors closed upon him, the old cuss looked at his inquisitor and stated bluntly, "to save my fucking soul"; calisthenics be damned, this guy was perpetually fighting a championship bout).

Despite the irksome fey ironic-literalists, my only real pet peeve with all of this empty conversational nonsense is what I call the Misanthropic Mute. The person who, when obviously spoken to, completely ignores you. We've all known them. You pass by them and, already intimidated by their dour aura, you usually dispense with the warm-up Howya utterances and move straight to the more formal, "Hello." Nothing. More often than not the person actually looks right at you as you hit the O of hello and nothing registers on their sad face and they just keep on walking. "Hey, twit," you want to scamper after them, nipping at their heels, "I just recognized the fact that in outward appearances at least you seem to be a fellow human being and I offered you an aural, nay, a humanly verbal acknowledgement of your human existence, and all I'm asking in return is a little human reciprocation, a grunted "Hey" will suffice to assure me that I, too, am human, still breathing in and breathing out, just trying to get through another ten seconds here without worrying about the fate of my effing soul, what'dya say?" But instead I usually just mutter silently, trying to send telepathic waves their way, "trip, trip, trip," until another person comes along muttering to me, "What's up?" I think from now on I'll accost all the known Misanthropic Mutes I encounter with a gregarious "Howdy howdy." That should shake 'em up good.

Okey-dokey, bye bye now.