Rolling up my sleeves and talking small

My wife and I have very different approaches toward engaging strangers. Basically she does and I don’t. This is something I’m working on because I’ve noticed that the people Santina engages often engage her in return, which is pleasant. But initiating conversation requires a skill at small talk — which I was born without. It’s not so obvious as a missing leg; or even a missing shoe, but it’s there (or not there, if you like).

Fortunately, we live in the Tourister Mill apartment complex (they used to make the Tourister Luggage here) where I have plenty of opportunities to practice. The management bills itself as dog friendly, but in fact they’re pretty much dog crazy; seems like everyone has a dog — some have two. And you can hear those dogs, all nails, scuttling down the hardwood hallways. Often I find myself sharing a five second elevator ride with someone and their dog.

“That,” I’ve begun to say in my new outgoing mode, “is the smartest looking dog I’ve seen all day!” Which marks me immediately as a friendly person worth talking to. Conversations flow effortlessly in the remaining two or three seconds of the ride. Occasionally I slip up and say it (as I did just this morning) to someone with two dogs. “Which one?” this friend-in-the-making asked. Knowing better than to say the one with the torn ear, I said “The one working on the Sudoku.” Which left the owner frowning and looking from one dog to the other. But by then the elevator had stopped, the door had opened, and I was headed across the lobby toward a smiling woman with a perky Pomeranian. (Actually, that’s a bit of folderol, there was no such woman. It was just a literary ploy because I was going next to confess to you that I don’t know my dogs and have no clue where Pomerania even is — big joke, Pomerania, haha. But then I looked it up and of course there is a historical region called Pomerania. It’s on the Baltic Sea and has a proud heritage; even a coat of arms — not one their marketing department shelled out big bucks for, but still).

Now I’m brushing up on the history of Pomerania so I can knock the socks off the next resident I encounter with a Pomeranian. Until I’ve mastered it I’ll still be saying “Goodness, that’s the smartest looking dog I’ve seen all day!” It’s a universally acceptable expression. And it also works just fine when I happen upon a parent with a small child in tow. Same thing. No difference.