When You Want to Talk to Strangers
March 30, 2006 by Veronica Mitchell
A few of my friends actually seek conversations on airplanes. They like meeting new folks. They sometimes choose books to “read” that they think might invite questions.
While I am enjoying the blogosphere, people in real life are a little more scary to me. I am bookish, not gregarious, and when I bring a book somewhere, it’s not a prop. So I am a little ambivalent about a recent discovery: whenever I read books in public about the dark side of the supernatural, strangers want to talk about it.
I took a book on the history of witchcraft to my favorite diner once. I had barely opened it before a woman asked me if I thought witchcraft was real. I told her I was skeptical. She seemed disappointed. The same book inspired lots of nervous glances and silent false starts from a man sitting next to me on an airplane. I think he really wanted to talk to me, but was even shyer than I am.
Most recently I finished In Search of Dracula by Raymond McNally and Rado Florescu, a history of Vlad III of Wallachia and how he became the mythic figure Dracula. On one of my glorious nights out by myself, I went to a comfy coffeehouse to read it. A young man (men at coffeehouses all seem very young to me. I must be old.) wanted to know all about it. How do you politely talk to an unknown man about medieval torture and murder? That is an etiquette dilemma.
In Search of Dracula is an enjoyable read, though I skipped the most gruesome chapter. Its biggest flaw is the absence of sufficient documentation for the reader to evaluate evidences for herself. The usual tendency of popular history to dumb things down for those readers who have a pathological fear of footnotes. Its effect as conversational catalyst was unforeseen, and I’m still not sure how to feel about it.
So the next time you feel a little lonely and wish you could meet someone new to chat with, you have a number of options. Start a blog, join a club, go to church, try a blind date, or sit in a public place reading about ghouls, goblins and witches. Tell me how it goes.
I would love to find out which books actually discourage conversation, so I can pull one out as a prop on my next airplane ride or when I’m just trying to get some quiet time in a coffee shop.
Perhaps ‘A History of Serial Murderers’ or ‘How To Be An Effective Jehovah’s Witness.’
My experience suggests books on serial killers would invite rather than repel.
I suggest housekeeping manuals, collections of Victorian sermons, anything with a big hairy spider on the cover, and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Of course, except for the spider book, they would also be too dull to read.