Learn to talk to everyone, even if you think they aren't as smart as you.

Yes, I know this sounds elitist, like I'm smarter than you, blah blah blah. But it's probably true, with some conditions. I am likely smarter than you about some things, but you're likely smarter than me about others. It depends on what we're talking about.

You may know more than me about the plumbing in my house, or the electrical wiring, or how to get rid of weeds or squirrels in the attic. All those practical things at which I'm a klutz, a dolt.

But I may know more than you about literature and the arts, or about finance or medicine or nuclear physics, which may make me think that I can talk down to you -- or just not talk to you at all because it would be a waste of my valuable time and also because it might lead you to think that I want some kind of relationship with you.

I have to resist that impulse. Why? Because it's not nice, but also because it puts up a barrier between us that is artificial and that is insulting and that serves no good purpose.

Let's back up and assume that you own a house. Something goes wrong with it, as it inevitably will. Something in the plumbing, the wiring, the whatever.

A guy comes to the house to work on it. How do you talk to him? Or do you talk to him at all?

One impulse is to assume that he's someone who didn't go to college and so doesn't know about anything you like to talk about. But hold on a minute. Do all your conversations have to be about your special area of knowledge? In other words, I'm saying why not a few minutes of what we call "chitchat"? After all, he probably doesn't want to waste his time talking to you at length any more than you want to waste yours talking to him for more than a minute or so. In fact, he's likely to be paid by the job, meaning how many hours he has to spend on it, meaning that your talking with him only prevents his getting to another job -- and may add to your cost, too.

But that doesn't mean the brief time you spend together has to be awkwardly silent. "Thanks for coming on such short notice." "How's it going?" "This your last job of the day? Get to go home after this?" "I'll be in the basement if you need me. Just call down the stairs." "Sorry for the mess on the counter, but I haven't been able to wash dishes for a couple of days." Etc.

In some cases, you might learn something you didn't know that could come in handy sometime. For instance, an appliance repair guy came to my house once to fix the ice-maker in our freezer that had stopped making ice. He didn't just fix it but -- being a friendly, talky type -- insisted on showing me how the mechanism worked and what had gone wrong. Guess what? Next time it happened, I fixed it myself!

And yes, it is quite likely that you're smarter -- by measured I.Q. -- than many of the folks who work for you or who you come in contact with on a subway or bus or wherever. But it's not always a good idea to presume that they're less fortunate, less happy, that they're doing what they're doing because they made bad decisions in life; that may well be true, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're miserable or that they wish they could be in whatever lofty, well-paid, "important" profession that you're in. They may be quite content with the life they live.

There's a woman who cleans my house once a week, doing all the stuff I don't want to do, and whenever she's here, we chat. About her kids, about my kids, about whatever. She's not stupid.
Am I smarter? Probably, just in terms of verbal range and "book-learning"and maybe even higher reasoning dexterity. But she's still a friendly, interesting person with a life of her own that seems to suit her just fine -- and she even laughs at my lame jokes. And hey, she invites her relatives to Thanksgiving dinner and cooks for them all. Could I do that? No way.

I bought groceries not long ago and pushed my cart to the check-out. The tag on the clerk's shirt says he's worked at the same job, at the same store, since 1979. I say, "You've worked here for 30 years? I'll bet you're getting pretty good at it by now." A clerk at a neighboring register laughs and says, "He's the best!" Then my clerk says he's due to retire in another five years. He and his wife both; she works in a clothing store downtown. They recently bought a boat that they've moored at their little cabin on a nearby river and are happily looking forward to the time they can do nothing but fish and walk in the woods and entertain their grandchildren.

So here's a guy I might have dismissed as "not smart enough" to talk to because he's worked in a grocery store all his adult life. Turns out he has a better retirement plan than me!

We never know how certain people ended up in certain jobs. There are many famous writers and artists who, finding no market for their work early on, did menial work just to pay the rent or get money for groceries. The clerk you dismiss as a minimum-wage employee you don't need to talk to may turn out to be someone whose works fetch millions someday in a museum or whose book turns up on the best-seller list.

But that's not why we should talk to those we don't think are as smart as we are. It's the simple
human thing to do. It costs nothing, and it's easy. It's pleasant, even kind of fun.

"Looks like spring, but you never know," you might say to the clerk at the Dollar Store. She says in return, "Remember that blizzard we had in March a few years back?" You say, "Yeah, I guess we're never out of the woods, huh?" "Take it easy." "You, too."

Or you're paying for gas at the 7-11, and you decide to pick up a breakfast burrito, too. "Are these made locally?" you ask. "Yeah," the guy behind the counter says. "Mama Rosa's, out on the highway. She brings 'em in every morning." "Hey, I've passed that place lots of times. Is the food good?" "The best," he says as he gives you your change. "Try to tamales. Smothered."
"I'll do it," you say, and you mean it. As you're headed for the door, he says, "Come by after eleven some morning, and those burritos are half-price -- if we have any left." "Hey thanks," you say.

Simple human interaction. It's what it's all about, no?

On some level, we're all the same. Of course some of us have "made it" and have lots more money than others, but what if you, being rich right now, suddenly lost everything and had to talk to other people not from your higher perch but nose to nose? Couldn't happen, you say? It happened in Nazi Germany, and it happens all over the world even today. In other words, what if tomorrow you were stripped of your position, your standing in society, your belongings, and forced to make your way in a world where being smarter didn't give you any advantage?

Would you be able to talk to your fellow humans? Have you retained that ability -- or have you lost it somewhere along the way? Or did you never have it?

Some of us prosper here on Earth, some of us struggle, but, in the end, we're all basically in it together, more or less alike underneath our circumstances. Poverty and/or lack of education makes life harder for some of us, while wealth and learning puff others of us up shamelessly. But if we subtract certain factors that we often have no control over -- how we look, how "smart" we are, what kind of family we came from -- we're all just mortal humans, looking for the same things: ease and love and something beyond ourselves and our short lives to hope for.

Good luck to us all.

Now let the chitchat begin!