SMALL TALK SMART : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

SHAKESPEARE often used small talk to get to big talk. A few minor players are bubbling about this and that in order to set up Hamlet's soliloquy or Othello's rant.

They use small talk as a tactic for stalling. That's not true of pure small talk, which is a thing unto itself, and needn't serve any other purpose.

Yet the most superficial subjects can be surprisingly deep, a phenomenon that has more to do with attitude than with content.

The initiation of small talk - " how're you doin '' - means that someone has chosen to break through the carapace of normal self-interest, and is thinking of you, if only briefly. 

And you, if only briefly, are pleased enough to return the same question.

Small talk need not only be that small. It may be about sports, the weather, TV shows. It's about the things that we share that bind us together. It's just how you are. It's how you fit in the same world with me.

SOME of my daily five are friends I contact frequently, but I always tried to add one or two to the daily mix.

Last week I emailed a woman in upstate New York who used to be my assistant and is now an artist ; a woman I worked for 10 years ago when I volunteered in a children's hospital ; a doorman in my apartment building who is laid up with a broken foot.

A fellow I have known since kindergarten, a lawyer now retired in Florida; and another old friend with whom I played one-on-one basketball 50 years ago in Washington D.C., practically every day.

I told him how I missed our games.

'' The other night, I was watching Steph Curry, and he reminded me off how I used to score on you at will.'' Not all my small-lalk messages are sweet.

And not all are written messages. In the course of a normal week, I find a way to chat with delivery people, store clerks, the mailman, my barber, with cops, with the woman at UPS who just had a baby.

Babies are gold-mine subjects for small talk. Small talk about small people.

'' So, there is so much bigness of small talk at a time short on comfort. ''

The World Students Society thanks Roger Rosenblatt, who is the author of '' Making Toast,'' '' Kayak Morning,'' '' Cold Moon,'' '' The Boy Detective,'' '' Rules for Aging '' and the forthcoming, '' More Rules for Aging.''