How to be a boss on National Talk in an Elevator Day

The last Friday in July is National Talk in an Elevator Day. As the name suggests, it’s the day on which celebrants are encouraged to strike up a conversation with strangers in an elevator. Many people find this behavior abhorrent, especially in the polite South, where I live.

Comedian Steven Wright once riffed on our societal preference for quiet stillness in elevators: “When I was little, my grandfather used to make me stand in a closet for five minutes without moving. He said it was elevator practice.” But things are different in the iPhone era.

'Check the apartment lease if you like, Phil, but I’m certain you can’t take physical delivery of 1,000 head of cattle.'

A stranger is as likely to continue a phone conversation in your presence, if only for a spell, as to honor the previously prescribed elevator silence. While this overheard snippet isn’t itself conversation, it’s an opening you can exploit on this national day of untrammeled talking.

Choose for a chat partner not the bloke yammering into his cell about the importance of making quarterly numbers, the weekend duffer swearing by her new irons to the person on the other end, or the man-child telling someone he calls “Sully” how “epic” their weekend will be.

When the call ends — for they don't usually persist once the door closes — converse with the talker who seems most interesting based on his or her phone conversation contributions that you overheard.

Choose the stranger on the elevator who said things like this:

“I hear you, Bob, but it's like they say: Eating a freshly baked cookie in a treehouse doesn’t make you one of the Keebler Elves. What’s that? Yes, they do say that.”

“Try it again, only this time ease up on the French horn and give me more didgeridoo.”

“You're telling me that whole time you had no idea you were tandem hang gliding with Van Morrison?”

“That’s a heck of a time to learn your pants weren’t reversible.”

“For the life of me I don’t see it, but if Federal Reserve Chairman Powell and character actress Margo Martindale agree, then who am I to disagree?”

“Can’t talk now, but you’ll never guess who’s holding back jet-pack technology for personal travel.”

“Top three U.S. presidents I'd want watching my six in hand-to-hand combat? Easy. Coolidge, Jackson, and Polk. Wait, no nunchucks? Replace Polk with Taft.”

"Well, I suppose you're right. Shoulder relocation surgery does sound worse."

"Mayor McCheese and Hamburglar are in, but Grimace’s people want to see a rewrite of Act 2."

"Sorry your dinner date gave you dead eyes, but to be clear, I never said he’d dance like nobody’s watching. I said he’d watch like nobody’s dancing."

“Check the apartment lease if you like, Phil, but I’m certain you can’t take physical delivery of 1,000 head of cattle.”

“See you at the Battle of Bull Run re-enactment, Sister Hanrahan.”

People who say such things cannot help but be interesting. And who knows? Maybe in celebrating National Talk in an Elevator Day, you'll make a new friend. Of course, then you'll have nothing to do on October 16, which is National New Friends Day.