I am constantly amazed at the facility with which strangers make convincing small talk, at the same time I am appalled at my own ineptitude at it. I can see the same person around the neighborhood, in a store or restaurant, without managing to advance beyond the most rudimentary, polite exchange. When I do manage to overcome this initial hurdle – sometimes with a circumstantial reason to say more than the bare minimum, other times out of a desperate attempt to avoid becoming locked into the same stagnant pattern – I find the pressure overwhelming. I try too hard; I sound overeager, phony, inauthentic. My interlocutor, contractually bound, as it were, to be friendly and forthcoming, gives every outward indication of enjoying my chatter, but I imagine them rolling their eyes as soon as I depart.