James and Matilda are having dinner at his grandparents' house. The grandparents and the grandson are locked in a polite stand-off wherein they are able to make chit-chat until the cows come home but are unable to scale the conversational wall of feeling and emotion. Dinner topics are:
- the weather in Spitzbergen
- the local amenities and scenery
- habitat of the wildlife there
- plants to be found
- similar sidelights on life in the Arctic Circle
I know that old line about the three deadly sins of a dinner party: Discussing politics, religion or money. So that's out. When I'm stuck for a conversational gambit I take a leaf out of Yul Brynner's book. 'Moses, Moses, Moses'. (I am kidding, you know. Usually I drop clangers all over the place like asking an unemployed man what he does for a living...)
What are your conversational fall-backs?
Black holes.
ReplyDeleteWhenever we have a dinner table conversation that starts heading south (I'm not talking about company conversation - this is strictly a family joke)...all anyone has to say is:
"What about those black holes?"
It solves all sorts of conversational problems - it's hard to bicker when everyone is laughing.
I tend to find a nice quiet corner and stick my nose in a book. Afterall, silence is golden. Maybe not the best bit of advice on conversation, but it keeps my feet on the floor where they belong instead of in said mouth.
ReplyDeleteSo, Betty Debbie, do you ever get as far as discussing the flora and fauna within a black hole?
ReplyDeleteA little chit-chat about bending space/time and event horizons and the conversational ice is usually broken...by that I mean any tense situations between the kidlets is defused.
ReplyDeleteBetty Barbara here--
ReplyDeleteFavorite vacation locations, latest movie, book, etc. How the local baseball/football team is doing--All of these have worked in the past and are usually good for bridging those dead zones.
Hmmmm, black holes--actually used to talk about those with a physicist cousin.