I spend a lot of time thinking about what holds its value as AI pervades everything. The list is short. Near the top are the people who’d pick up the phone if you called. This is a piece about how to stumble on those people, which turns out not to be the way you’d expect.
I grew up in the South, the land of small talk. My parents drilled manners into me from before I could read. I always pushed back, so they nicknamed me the barbarian. The barbarian is not holding his silverware correctly. The barbarian is not waiting for the hostess to lift her fork before starting to eat. That last one is a real rule almost nobody knows. The barbarian was forced to learn it anyway.
Visiting my grandparents was the worst of it. They were proper people. The afternoon would build toward sitting in the living room on couches and chairs, looking at each other, having the kind of conversation where everyone takes their turn and nothing gets said. I could not handle it.
But the kitchen was a different world. There was action and energy there. People were using skill. My mom might have been stressed, but she could cut onions like a machine. My dad would smile as he prepped the burger patties, running his hands through the meat like a kid with play-doh. Something simmering on the stove, someone watching the oven, someone tasting a sauce and asking for the salt. Things had to happen at the right time and everyone was locked in. The conversation was something that arose from doing things together.
The pattern held into my twenties and thirties. At every party I went to, the best conversations were in the kitchen. Always next to whoever was opening another bottle of wine or refilling the chip bowl. The living room is where you are supposed to have fun, which is exactly why you cannot. The kitchen has no pressure on it. Nobody is performing. The fun shows up because nobody is looking for it.
Once you start looking, kitchens are everywhere. The best connections I’ve made all happened in places organized around something else. A project, a job, a problem somebody needed solved. The work was the point, and the connection grew up alongside it, uninvited. This is why the singles meetup never takes, or the group built around the goal of connecting. You can’t aim at the thing directly.
Go find a kitchen. Do something real with other people and let the rest show up on its own. It’s worked for me, and I’m a barbarian. We’re not known for making friends.
Thanks to readers of early drafts: Cansafis Foote, Delores L, Lauren Valdez