Lazy Conversations

There is a great scene in the film 'L.A. Story' which is set at a fancy pants wannabe lunch. You're in the middle of getting snippets of bizzare L.A. socializing when Steve Martin's character addresses a very serious looking lady beside him.

"So Shelia, I hear you are studying the art of convseration?"

She turns slowly and replies,

"Yes."

Why are we so bad at the art of conversation?

As it turns out, pregnant women are soft targets for lazy conversationalists. For people who can't be stuffed taking a real interest in a person the ammunition is plenty. Hayley has been on the recieving end of many bizzare comments like;
"Wow, your looking huge!"
"Haven't your boobs grown?!"
and
""Your getting quite a nice J-Lo bum."

Now, while that last one was probably meant to be a compliment, aren't these stupid things to tell a pregnant women? I mean, Hayley is looking great, but I imagine there is a fair bit of self examination going on as it is without comments like these. They could be careless statements from the socially retarded but I also think it's just becuase people are too damn lazy.

I think about my own chats to people. For about 80% of the time I travel the well worn rut of work, weekend and updates without even thinking. I was chatting to someone the other day who was a script writer for TV. I made some inane comment about, "Wow, that sounds cool . . ." and then kept on talking. (In my favour I was running up a hill in the dark and the rain at the time) But nevertheless - the point remains. And from seeing Hayley over the last 3 months become lazy conversation fodder, I realise that we must guard ourselves against this terrible crime aganist humanity, especially when it comes to the pregnant, old, injured or anyone sporting anything obvious which , in turn, becomes public property. I was considering putting down some ready to use ice breakers to get us out of this rut but I realised not only that I don't have any, but that it would also be kind of defeating the point. We have to become good at the art of conversation, not just programmed parrots. And I guess if you can pull that off with a pregnant women, you've climbed the everest of conversations.

Scott