to It would be easy to say this is âyet another example of how boomers destroyed culture,â but it would be more apt to blame how capitalismâs exploitation of baby-boomers destroyed culture.
In the first couple hundred years or so of the middle classâs existance, young people grew up inside an extended family and learned social roles by emulating their elders. Being a good host or hostess, and a good guest, were values that society recognized as skill-based. Hence, elders actively taught those skills and young people actively learnt them. But come along the baby boom, with an unprecedented combination of wealth and relative numbers, and corporations rushed to define a âteenagerâ market segment that they could profit from directly by separating their demographic off from the more stable âmiddle class familyâ demographic. So âteenage cultureâ emerged, and they myth of the âgeneration gapâ, and baby boomers never learned the more sophisticated skills of being good guests and good hosts. And hence, many of those skills are only available to people who like hiding out in the HM435-HM477 sections of the library stacks. So here are two little hints from my time in the UBC main library, tested and proven over nearly half a century:
1) When you host a gathering, you have a duty of care to your guests. You have a legal duty of care to keep them reasonably safe, and you have a social duty of care to help them be reasonably comfortable. So try to greet each guest as they arrive, remember their name and something interesting about them, and --> introduce them by name to someone else at the party who might find that thing interesting too.<-- Sample script: âBill, I want you to meet Emma. She is restoring a â65 Barracuda, similar to the one you restored.â After your guests are mostly finished arriving, keep an eye on your guests and when one is backed into a corner behind the potted palm looking miserable, go fetch them and introduce them to someone else. Sample script:Â âOh, Phyllis, there you are! Have you met Toby yet? Toby! You should really tell Phyllis about your pet tortoise!â
2) When you are a guest and you get buttonholed in this way, help out your host by at least pretending to be interested in â65 Barracudas or pet tortoises, and asking the other guest something. Ask them anything. Or if you see the guy moping behind the potted palm before your host does, approach them and ask them something. The key is, use the words âwhatâ or âwhereâ or âhowâ to ask the question, rather than âdo/did ...?â That way they cannot simply, desperately, answer âyesâ or ânoâ and have to tell you something you can build on. And donât worry about ânot wanting to pryâ. People tend to really like to talk about themselves, provided you give them leeway to decide what part of themselves to talk about. Sample script: âLucky you! How did you manage to get your hands on a â65 Barracuda/pet tortoise?â Or if you didnât get a prompt from your busy host, âWhat canapĂŠs are the tastiest?â or the old standbys Sample script: âwhat school do you go to/what are you studying/what do you do in your spare time when youâre not at a cocktail party?â
You can actually memorize just one of these open-ended questions and use it in nearly every circumstance; and then follow up by noticing what the answer makes you curious about, and asking that.
Enjoy.
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