small talk.

Lately I've been contemplating the phenomenon of small talk. It's one of those things that I think about a lot for some reason, and I'm always astounded by how often it occurs and how utterly useless it is if all you get is the "small talk". I mean, if you don't care to really hear how a person's day is going or what they're up to, why do you ask "how are you?" or "what's up?" Why can't we just be satisfied with a simple greeting of hey, hello, hi, whatever you want and move on instead of asking questions for which we don't really want truthful answers? Personally, when I ask someone how they are, I want more than just "I'm fine, how are you?" WHY are you fine? What makes this a fine day? Something must be happening for it to not be a horrible day, or maybe it is, and they just don't want to admit to it because horrible has THREE TIMES as many syllables as fine.

I guess it's just one of those little things that will always kind of irk me, not that I'm going to refuse to engage myself in small talk because of it, but I definitely always try to make my small talk as big as possible...which usually means talking really fast before the other person realizes I'm breaking the small talk code.