Recently, during a conversation, I found myself doing something I almost never do. I read a passage from a web site aloud, over the phone, and did it in the same flat, deadpan way that a third-grader would read from a textbook when forced to do so by an evil shrew of a teacher in horn-rimmed glasses. Not that such an experience was ever a part of my childhood, of course.

I mentioned it later by way of apology, and of course the person I was talking to hadn’t noticed. I was at once relieved and embarrassed. The whole incident started me down a mental road that I hadn’t traveled recently, and I started to think about things that I notice when I talk to people, and when they talk to me. Some people become incredibly lazy and apathetic about everyday verbal communication.

I hear a lot of things said by people here in the South that are there purely syntactic placeholders. When a retail clerk tells me to “Have a nice day,” it’s pretty clear that she isn’t really expressing some inner wish that I enjoy the remainder of my day. She’s expected to say that, and is simply following a pattern. We’re creatures of habit, most of us, and these patterns of speech tend to develop to the point where we really don’t think about what we’re even saying anymore. We just form the words. Sometimes we don’t even do that well, because our mouths are on autopilot. I say, “we,” because I’m as human as anyone else, but I have tried very hard not to fall into that sort of pattern, and I hope I never do.

I heard a terrific example of this on a New York subway on a visit to the city a few years ago, and it came to mind recently. I’d not been on a subway for quite a while, because I was getting around on foot and in taxis during most of my work there, but it was the most convenient way to get to a part of town I’d really wanted to visit.

As I stepped into the crowded subway car, a scratchy, heavily accented voice was blaring from the overhead speakers. It was very hard to make out what the man was saying. He’d clearly repeated this incantation so many times that he no longer bothered fully pronouncing the words, so it sounded something like this:

“Fifty nine see columba circle transa hee fata A B C D nesta 66 see sanka da cozendore.”

Most of the information was readily accessible via context clues. We were definitely at the 59th Street / Columbus Circle station, and it was possible to transfer to the A, B, C, and D trains there. The next stop was indeed 66th street. The last three words, though, actually stymied me for a while. As we pulled into the next station, he made a similar announcement that ended with those same three “words,” and they were no clearer. Two stops later at 79th street, I finally got it. He was saying, “Stand clear of the closing doors.”

Call me silly, but I think information like that is probably considerably less useful if it requires four repetitions to decipher. It definitely wouldn’t have saved me from being squished by a closing door, even if I’d been stupid enough to fail to stand clear unbidden. It’s a splendid example of a syntactic pattern, though. The conductor clearly never, ever thought about the idea of someone getting caught in a door, or about the fact that he was even advising people to stand clear of the doors. He just habitually said “sanka da cozendore” at the end of every announcement. The phrase had come to have no more importance to him than the period at the end of this sentence.

In most conversations with people I’ve not talked with for a year, a week, or even a day, one of my first questions is inevitably, “How are you?” Everyone asks that, of course. The question is often rhetorical, and when it is, any answer other than, “Fine, thanks” will be met with a blank stare or an uncomfortable silence. I, on the other hand, don’t think that either the question or the answer should be rhetorical or automatic.

Of course, I’ve been guilty of forgetting my manners in conversations before. I sometimes get excited or distracted and go diving into issues that are on my mind without asking about the other person’s state of affairs. When that happens I’m embarrassed and I feel shame, but in my defense, the one thing I can claim is that I didn’t simply ask the question out of habit. In other words, if I ask how you are, it’s because I really want to know.

If I wish you a nice day, I’m really wishing you a nice day. I wish everyone felt that way. I love words. Treated properly, they can carry immense charges of emotion, beauty, and impact. When we use phrases as mere punctuation, as conversational fixtures, we rob them of that beauty. They can lose their texture, so, so easily, the colors dissolving away and the contrast fading until we’re left with a mere wire-frame, a skeletal outline of what they once meant. When that happens, it saddens me.

I called in to my office this morning just before arriving at work. The receptionist answered the phone with a cheery, “Good afternoon, X Digital!” Was she really wishing me a good afternoon? Of course not, or she would have surely come to the conclusion that 8:40 AM isn’t quite the right time for that. She was just answering the phone with the same stock phrase she’d been using the previous day. Answering the phone with a simple, “Hello!” would have been infinitely preferable to parroting a false sentiment.

That’s why it’s my habit to answer my desk phone with a simple, “Hi, this is Scott!” It would be silly of me to wish an unknown caller a good morning or afternoon, wouldn’t it? Suppose the caller is someone I’m quite unhappy with. If I answer with a nice, heartfelt wish for a greeting and then find I’m talking to my own Emmanuel Goldstein, what does that say about my sincerity? As with valor, I think discretion is the better part of eloquence. I’d rather be a man of few words and make every one of them count than be a man who spews endless, meaningless platitudes.

There are a few things that people seem compelled to say that drive me absolutely crazy, both because they’re unnecessary and because they’re just so insipid! Have you ever listened to a call-in radio talk show where a caller feels it’s necessary to identify himself as a “First-time caller, long-time listener?” He’s a part-time thinker, too, if he somehow has the impression that anyone actually cares! Have you ever been out on a sweltering day and had someone give you a silly grin and ask, “Hot enough for you?” I always just answer, “Yes, thanks.”

Maybe a swing toward more sincere self-expression is too much to expect from this society, but I can dream.