Making People Talk by Barry M Farber

Author:Barry M Farber [Farber, Barry M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

Annoy Not

The one-armed man was quietly enjoying a drink at the bar.

The man standing beside him suffered a seizure of curiosity.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I notice you only have one arm.”

The one-armed man put his drink gently upon the counter, looked slowly and deliberately down in the direction of his missing arm; then looked up straight into the eye of the questioner and said, “Dear me, I do believe you’re right!”

The first rule of medicine is, the treatment shall do no harm.

That’s also the first rule of Making People Talk. It seems easy. After all, only bullies, bigots, misanthropes, and psychopaths would seek to hurt, right?

That is correct. But the big word there is “seek.” This chapter is devoted to those who do not seek to hurt, but do a creditable to brilliant job of it, anyway.

Steve Carlin, the first of the genius breed of TV producers (“The $64,000 Question”) once chose an unlikely candidate to head up one of his TV projects, a young man who came across as much less outgoing, aggressive, imaginative, or knowledgeable than dozens of others who wanted the job.

When asked why that particular young man was chosen, Carlin replied, “He knows how to deal non annoyingly.”

So few people do. If the average person’s tongue were an airplane, it would be grounded. Fully 95 percent of all mouths should be shut down for repairs!

“What’s new?” for an opening example, is an annoying way to be greeted. It implies that your vocation, your marital status, your interests and activities—in fact, your overall quotient of life achievement—left something to be desired at last report, but, in the spirit of you’re-not-down-until-you’re-out, the other person is willing to give you another chance. ‘ ‘What’s new?” is the verbal equivalent of passing in bridge, forfeiting in tournament play, and pleading nolo contendere when accused of a crime. For that fleeting moment, the one who says “What’s new?” gives the world a glance at the indicator needle of his intellectual gasoline tank—showing empty!

“What do you do?” is another no-win clinker. Those involved in the lower-level occupations don’t like to have to say it out loud, and those way up the ladder are annoyed you don’t already bloody well know what they do.

The Chinese, five thousand years advanced in such matters, have an especially uplifting way of saying “Pleased to meet you.” When you’re introduced to a Chinese, you shake his hand and say, “Jiu yang, jiu yang.” That means, “I have long heard of you and your lustrous reputation.” That’s nice. Ridiculous, but nice.

If the American secretary of state were helicoptered down into a rice paddy in central Fukien Province for a media event and introduced by the local party secretary to a random peasant harvesting millet, he probably would not say, “I have long heard of you and your lustrous reputation. ’ ’ Under slightly less extenuated circumstances, however, he would.

(Kristi Witker, popular news reporter for Channel 11 in New York, enjoys telling the story of the day she was

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