We’ve all been there — standing at a party all alone, glued to the hors d’oeuvres table, grinning like an idiot, trying to look as if our self-esteem weren’t in the process of gurgling down a deep black hole.
The holiday season is littered with such potentially ego-crushing festive events, which loom in front of the shy and the introverted like trenches crisscrossed with barbed wire.
But truth be told, not only the bashful suffer. Such events “can be traumatic even for people who’d never consider themselves shy,” says Letitia Baldrige, Jackie Kennedy’s one-time social secretary.
Still, be of good cheer, you wallflowers and shrinking violets. Experts are standing by to help. We have consulted the wise and the hapless, scoured the best and the worst to reveal what conversational gambits work, and — even more important — which ones will bomb.
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Just follow these simple guidelines:
– RULE NO. 1: Laugh at their jokes. It’s commonplace that people like to talk about themselves. But the truth is, they like an appreciative audience busting up at their cleverness even better.
Says comedian David Steinberg, who ought to know, “If somebody’s telling a joke, don’t just laugh — over-laugh. Be the kind of supportive individual that Alan Alda would describe as enabling: ‘Oh, that’s wonderful! You’re drinking five martinis? That’s so great!’ “
– RULE NO. 2: Keep an eye out for land mines. Debra Fine, the author of “The Fine Art of Small Talk,” has one ironclad law: Don’t ask personal questions you don’t know the answer to.
She sketches the following train wreck:
“So, Debra, where’s your husband tonight?”
“I don’t know. He left me, took the kids and all the credit cards.”
Fine, a professional speaker who lectures nationwide on the social graces, advises neutral, open-ended questions that are most likely to elicit a multiword response.
“Instead of saying, `How’s work?’ instead ask, `What’s been going on with work lately?”‘ she says. If somebody asks her, “How’s it going?” Fine might well say, “It’s going great. My kids are in college, and I’m really looking forward to being an empty-nester.”
She adds, “Did I brag about my kids? No. Did I tell you about all my aches and pains? No. I’ve given you something to talk to me about, if you’re truly interested.”
RULE NO. 3: Have a strategy for those awkward social situations when you don’t know anyone.
Baldrige, the author of “Letitia Baldrige’s Guide to the New Manners for New Times,” offers this advice for times when you don’t know a soul: Survey the room to find the group that’s obviously having the best time, and then sidle up to them.
“Wait respectfully on the outskirts,” she says, “and at some point they’ll turn to you and say hello.
“And you say, `Please forgive me — I’m a total stranger in this room and don’t know anyone. But this group looked like so much fun, I just had to come over.’ They’ll be charmed.”
RULE NO. 4: Speak ill of nobody. At least, not until you’ve scoped out the situation.
In the party-conversation guidebook, “There are more don’t’s than do’s,” says Michael Schur, a TV writer in Hollywood. Schur wrote the holiday-party episode for the NBC show “The Office” that aired a couple of weeks ago.
But Schur reaches back to his college days for the worst crash-and-burn scenario he has witnessed.
Trying to engage an attractive young woman, he says, “this guy I knew, as conversational opener, went with how much he disliked a certain person who went to college with us. The woman turned out to be that guy’s girlfriend, so it was a double whammy.”
Another no-no is to run down the party.
“Never criticize the party!” Baldrige says. “Some people, in shyness, will say, `Gosh, this is a rather cold group, don’t you think? And the hors d’oeuvres are miserable.’ That,” she adds sternly, “will never do.”
RULE NO. 5: Be gracious and frank if you’ve forgotten somebody’s name. Fine says she used to just wing it if she couldn’t remember somebody’s name, hoping it would come up in conversation.
“But now I’ll say, `I’m so sorry — I already forgot your name. I’m just so bad at this.’ Because otherwise,” she says, “if a client or customer at an office party comes up a few minutes later, how will I introduce them?”
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On the West Coast, where egos can swell to stupefying size, comedian and writer Steinberg says the dangers of a misstep are especially high.
“In Los Angeles, it’s very dangerous,” he says, “because there are actual celebrities who are well-known whom I’ve never heard of, and really don’t care about.
“But if you register any of that on your face,” Steinberg adds, “that’s comparable to a train wreck. They won’t like you and will remember you forever.”