4 conversation starters that beat "Where are you from?", "What program are you in?" & "Where did you work before?"

My multiple monitors: too much of a good thing is amazing

“I particularly value conversations which are meetings on the borderline of what I understand and what I don't, with people who are different from myself.” - Theodore Zedlin

We are now well into the school year - welcome and welcome back respectively! Today's post is to aid a dear friend who noted "after someone asks you where on campus you're living and you tell them, and you ask them where on campus they're living, the conversation can never be revived". For him, I offer these four opening gambits, for which the follow-ups write themselves.

1. Why are you not dead yet? 
So it's a bit aggressive as an opening question. But it works every time. Average life expectancy has doubled in the last 150 years, as the utterly-brilliant, super-glad-she-is-still-alive-to-write-this Laura Helmuth points out in her Longevity series on Slate. Given that many of those gains were made via improved infant and child survival rates, it's completely plausible that some stray bacteria / grizzly bear / barbershop-surgery would have already laid waste to the 1863 version of you. In my case, it would be the fact that I fall down a lot. Like, daily. But start asking this and you'll hear tales of childhood broken limbs, whooping cough, new organs provided and extraneous ones removed. There is no danger that this conversation will stall - here are 50 reasons total strangers sent Helmuth to explain their un-deadness. 

2. What do you evangelise? 

I acknowledge that reasonable people can reasonably disagree on many things. But there are also those things that reasonable people would call a "preference" or a "matter of opinion" that I am very confident that I am correct about. Other than the pleasure of list-making, my most enthusiastic evangelism is reserved for Bikram yoga, sending physical mail and dual-screen computer monitors. The first makes you bendy, the second is a dying art and the third lets you feel like you work at NASA Mission Control even if you're just multi-tasking by watching The Colbert Report while you send emails. My favourite responses to this question include avocations for "Minnesota" (though this guy's zeal is strongly tempered by his Midwestern pleasantness) and encouragement to "work deeply enough in the system to create change but not so deeply that you're attached to the status quo". 

3. What conspiracy theories are you open to having proved right? 

This works particularly well with people who are obviously off-the-charts clever. Or embittered national security analysts. Truly, the smartest people have the nuttiest views. Let's define a "conspiracy theory" as any point of view the New York Times would characterise as "unfounded". For instance, here are 2 that I could be persuaded to buy into: 

• I think it is possible that Fidel Castro is already dead and has been for some time. 
• I am pretty sure that the good people at the Coca-Cola Company are lying to us about Fresca not having any calories - it's implausibly tasty.

I dare you - ask people this question and you just might walk away with Tupac's current address and the "knowledge" that his roommate is Elvis Presley. 

4. What book do you claim to have read but haven't?* What book would you deny having read?** 

In environments where we want people to think we're smart and have our act together, it's pretty bonding to share the ways in which you are only pretending to be smart and definitely do not have your act together. Also, it will give you something to sell to the tabloids when some of your Week One conversation buddies run for office.

*The French Lieutenant's Woman...indeed, I claimed all the way through a high school English semester to have read it. 
**He's just not that into you...indeed, he was not. But not for the reasons the book suggested.