The Lost Art of Conversation

Art forms rise and fall. Evolve, peak, and peter out. And so it goes.

At first man grunted. Eventually he conversed. And wrote and mailed and waited for letters. But all that might as well have taken place on another planet. This is what I discovered after a recent three-day spring break road trip with my 20-year-old daughter: After the ancient house phone died of neglect. After mobile phones and emails lost their lure. Beyond what now seems the old art of instant messaging, the world belongs to the nimble-fingered text messengers.

Kate and I were in the car traveling through Virginia for three days, the first three days of April, and though her purple cell phone (“I need a new one dad”) was always by her side, not once did she use it to actually call someone.

I take that back.

Once or twice she phoned her mother. And on the last day, about an hour from home on the PA Turnpike, she spoke with her roommate. “Only because she called me first,” according to Kate.

Otherwise, Kate was in more or less constant contact with friends up and down the East Coast by texting them. “I don’t like talking to people,” Kate confessed. “No unless I have to. Especially boys. They have nothing to say.”

Except Kevin, her old boyfriend. “He’s the only one I could actually talk to.” Once on vacation in the wilds of southern Utah, we had to drive 30 miles into the small town of Kanab each evening so she could get cell phone reception and whisper to Kevin from the back of our rented SUV.

But that seems long ago and far away. Now thousands of years of communication have been reduced to, or returned to, mysterious hieroglyphics:

ayt.
afaik. jk. pos.
np.
break sucks.
ruok?
rme. bored2death.
gal. hf.
em. pir. prw.
f2f p911? jw.
imo. kpc lotta work. iykwim.
weg. eod.
need gbh.
ilu.
gmta. ilu.
b4n.
ptb. aeap.
lu.
Lu2.

Translation:

Are you there?
Are far as I know. Just kidding. Parent over shoulder.
No problem.
Spring break sucks.
Are you OK?
Rolling my eyes. I’m bored to death.
Get a life. Have fun.
Excuse me? Parents in room. Parents are watching.
Face to face parent alert? Just wondering.
I my opinion, keeping parents clueless is a lot of work. If you know what I mean.
Wicked evil grin. End of discussion.
I need a great big hug.
I love you.
Great minds think alike. I love you.
Bye for now.
Please text back. As early as possible.
Love you.
Love you, too.

Every two or three minutes Kate would take her cell out of the glove compartment to check a new text. I’d never hear a beep, ring or buzz. Maybe she knew intuitively when a text was coming in. She’d quickly punch out a reply and put the cell back in the compartment.

On our brief road trip to Charlottesville and UVA, Monticello, Appomattox, Va Tech and my writing friend Professor Geller’s hilltop ranch lodge, I must admit Kate had no trouble hold a conversation. We discussed the former New York Governor Elliott Spitzer’s secret fondness for have prostitutes pee on him; the prospects of Obama actually winning the election; how the north, with its factories versus the south and its farms, was bound to win the Civil War; how we have no clue where brother/son Steve will wind up in college; the charm, and expense, of quilts; why Jefferson needed slave labor to operation his plantation; Tupac versus Biggie Smalls, who’s better; how lucky Jack Johnson is to live the surfer dude life in Hawaii and actually have a way of making in living with his music, and so on.

Still I wondered, if you’re not trapped behind the windshield with dad… “So Kate, what do you and your friends talk about when you’re actually face to face?”

“If it’s somebody I don’t know, it’s the usual questions. Where are you from? What’s your major? Where do you live? If we’re at a party, nobody talks anyway. It’s too loud.”

I was thinking while Kate talks. Let’s see: Automated teller machines handle our transactions. A computerized voice makes and confirms my flight or train reservations. The doc’s office has an automated prescription refill service. Pharmacy has automated prescription ordering. I always get automated receptionists. You can buy anything online. Buy or rent a house or a car online. Plan a vacation. Plan your retirement. Drive anywhere at the beck and call of the droning voice directions from the GPS.

“I don’ like talking to people if I can help it,” Kate says again.

“What if you get lost or can’t find what you need?”
“You ask them for me, OK? Will you?”

My faith in all things not texted or automated was restored less than an hour after we returned home. Kate retreated to her bedroom and I could hear her end of a cell conversation, must have been with that lasted a good hour-plus. Later that night a girlfriend from high school came over and they stayed up until three in the morning talking. “Yeah,” said Kate, “we talked like real human beings.”

The art of conversation may be at the tipping point, edging close to the abyss of automated voice programming and texting around the Thanksgiving dinner table, texting your wedding vows, texting your way through a job interview. “It’s just more efficient, dad. More to the point. And if you don’t have anything to say, you don’t say it.”

Just turn off your cell.

But we’re not there yet, thank god.