I need remedial training for atrophied social skills

Forget the Beach Body exercise class--that ship has sailed. (Sunk, more likely.) What I need right now, as my community emerges from Covid restrictions, is a remedial class on social skills. Call it Speak, Buddy!

Let's face it: social distancing has squelched many opportunities to exercise social skills. Small talk is awkward through a mask or across a plexiglass barrier, and Zoom meetings inhibit spontaneity, especially when they're recorded. Sure, you could offer up some witty repartee in the chat, but do you really want every off-hand comment coming back someday to haunt you?

Given all these barriers to casual communication, it's no wonder that social skills have atrophied. I used to converse easily with strangers in line at the post office, trusting my gut instincts about what to say to whom, but now I spend so much time second-guessing my gut that it seems to have closed up shop. Either I can't think of a way to break the ice or else I get stuck in an awkward conversation and can't seem to make it stop. And it's even more difficult with friends and family--do they really mean it when they ask how I'm doing, or are they just being polite?

To aid in successful re-emergence from our Covid cocoons, the Speak, Buddy! program will offer a variety of hands-on exercises designed to restore ease in social settings:

Speed Small Talk: Can't manage small talk anymore? Fearful that every attempt at inconsequential chat will trap you in conversational quicksand? Speed Small Talk exposes you to a wide variety of strangers carrying egg-timers. You may not feel capable of maintaining an hour-long conversation, but how about sixty seconds? With practice, you'll start gradually increasing the time limit until you can comfortably chat with a complete stranger for up to ten minutes. Best of all, the timer allows you to exercise your personal chat function while also assuring a painless release from deadly bores, intractable boasters, and Amway salesmen and their ilk.

The Gambit Game: Players move markers around a board and land on spaces designated for particular conversation contexts--the department meeting, for instance, or bumping into an old friend at the airport--and must play cards indicating the appropriate opening line for the designated context. Say you land on the "Baby Shower for a Colleague" space, and you hold only the following conversation cards: 

A. "Weather hot enough for you?"
B. "Are those plastic cups? I heard they cause birth defects!"
C. "Could this line possibly move any more slowly?"
D. "Goodness, you've grown!"

Of course it's always easiest to play the A card ("Weather hot enough for you?"), but then you have to hope to land on the "Child's Birthday Party" context to play D ("Goodness, you've grown!"). You wouldn't want to land on the "Dream Job Interview" space with nothing left to play but "Goodness, you've grown!"

The Really Relay: There's a big difference between "How are you?" and "But how are you--really?" Many a conversation has floundered in the gray area created by the various inflections of "really," and after a year coping with public suffering on a global scale, many of us have become accustomed to downplaying our own disasters because they seem so inconsequential in comparison to people who have lost their lives, livelihoods, or loved ones. How will we know when it's okay to admit our struggles and problems again? In this exercise, partners take turns asking "But how are you--really?" with various inflections until they get tired of saying "Fine--and you?" and start spilling their guts on what's really bothering them. Some participants may experience a dangerous side effect: they'll get so disgusted by the pettiness of other people's problems that they'll banish the word "really" from their vocabulary and give up entirely on trying to converse, but this is a small price to pay for permission to finally share our problems without feeling guilty that my ingrown toenail is not as serious as your aneurysm.

 

And there's more! Speak, Buddy! subscribers will hone the lost art of eye contact, memorize a list of foolproof conversational exits ("Sorry, I've got to water my begonias"), and master the finer points of initiating conversation in various unusual contexts (Q: When is it appropriate to accost the CEO of your company if you're so far down on the company organizational chart that you are essentially invisible? A: If you know CPR and he's choking to death). Subscribe today by picking up the phone and making a call. 

 

With your actual voice. 

 

Using words. 

 

If you haven't entirely forgotten how to do that.

 

But what will you say to the person who answers? Buy Speak, Buddy! today to find out.