It's a dark night in a suburb without streetlights. But on the first floor of a split-level home in the heart of Ravens Way, one man is trying to figure out why he is the way he is and committing what he finds to paper: Guy Verbose, introverted private eye.
The Big Conversation
Wednesday, July 1. 5:30 pm. It was hot in Ravens Way, and the afternoon sun was flooding in the front windows, warming up the living room. I was lying on the couch watching a rerun of Law and Order and trying to forget about the workday that just ended and the one coming hot on its heels.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the front door. I couldn’t see who it was, but I knew it was someone trying to sell us something. My wife got there first.
“Hi,” she said with a smile and a cheery voice.
I couldn’t hear the door-knocker's pitch, but my wife said something about camel crickets and how our house doesn't have a basement as she stood over the threshold, holding the storm door open with the left side of her body.
“Exterminator,” I thought. “No thanks.” Then I put the TV on mute, hoping I could hear more.
In response, the door-knocker, who I now knew to be a young woman, provided a canned response about the services her employer offered to keep bugs, including camel crickets, out of our home. She had learned her lines well.
Maintaining her smile, my wife said, “Sorry, we’re not interested,” and backed into the house.
I was proud of her. My wife is too nice to tell salespeople to hit the bricks, so she usually talks to them for way longer than necessary. Thus, seeing her wrap this interaction up in a few minutes was noteworthy.
If it had been me who answered the door, I would have reminded the intruder about the clearly visible “No Soliciting” sign, said “We’re not interested,” and shut the door while the interloper was (likely) in mid-sentence. Most of the time, I’m a mild-mannered, even-keeled, and polite person, but there’s something about salespeople knocking on my door that makes me irrationally angry and startlingly rude. In fact, I was so mean to the last guy who came to the door, he slowly backed away from me with his hands up. Surely, I'm going to hell.
My wife is not going to hell. She’s genuinely warm and caring, always eager to help, and loves to talk. In fact, when she goes to heaven, she’ll likely be the social chair a few weeks after admittance.
I was waiting for her to turn around, so I could congratulate her on ending the conversation in under 10 minutes, but just before she closed the door, I heard her say to the door-knocker, “Do you go to the University of Kentucky? I recently took my daughter to visit the campus. We liked it ….”
“Ugh. Here we go,” I mumbled. “We were so close!”
I would later learn that the door knocker was wearing a University of Kentucky hat, that she worked at the university last year, that she attended Binghamton University, and that she was working in Maryland for the summer.
But before that I learned all of that, and despite my annoyance, I marveled at how gracefully my wife navigated her conversation with this young, door-knocking stranger who didn’t know what “no solicitation” meant.
To an introvert like me, such conversational ease is like a magical superpower. I have no idea how it's even possible. I can issue a “Hi, how are you doing today?” well enough, but things tend to fall apart pretty quickly afterward. How on Earth do people keep small talk with strangers going?
Then, just when I thought the interchange had reached its conclusion, my wife asked the door-knocker if she wanted a bottle of Gatorade Propel. I nearly fell off the couch. Not because the Propel was mine (it wasn’t), but because I never realized how different she and I were and how much of an ass I can be. Here I am, an inch away from throwing boiling oil on these door-knocking scoundrels, and here she is replenishing their electrolytes.
"Man, I really need to be nicer to these people,” I thought as I took the TV off mute. But in my heart, I knew I'd get angry the next time someone knocked on the door.
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