I’m not the flutteriest social butterfly. I smile, I try to make the right amount of eye contact to look friendly and sane, but I’m generally sort of awkward with new people and just struggle to fake it til I make it. But I’m not at ease, which means I’m not great at putting other people at ease, either, though I wish I were.

And I’m going to a party this afternoon with a mix of family and strangers—excuse me, “friends I haven’t met yet”—so this is even more on my mind than my usual blog posts.(It’ll be fine, I’m sure. Right?)

There are the standards: mention the weather, ask how they know the party host, whatever. I try to channel my grandmother and find something that seems to interest the other party so I can ask them about it and make them do the talking. “What lovely earrings, where did you get them?” “Is that a good book sticking out of your purse?” “How did you come to begin collecting hand grenades?” Sometimes this tactic works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Apparently New Conversations Day is supposed to make us bust out of this and have more meaningful conversations: welcome an outsider, learn more about a group you disagree with. That’s fine, I guess. The problem with the webpage I found describing the purpose of this day is that no helpful examples were offered. I get why you’d welcome an outsider, but I don’t really feel like I would do well breezing into a community room and going, “So hey, why do y’all leave dog biscuit offerings for Cerberus? How do you avoid getting ants?”

Honestly, I’m not sure that we should go poking below the surface. Social media is an amazing tool, but anyone who has spent ten minutes scrolling any platform has probably learned that virtually every human being has some extremely unattractive aspects that can’t be unseen. Why go looking for them? Isn’t it easier to be friends with that guy up the street when you only suspect that his closet has several hundred compartments full of various skeletons? I know I don’t want to stand in line at the grocery store and be asked by the woman behind me about what has oozed from my various orifices over the years. I don’t want to pick at controversial topics with people I know well, much less people I’ve just met. I don’t know if that makes me too confrontational, not confrontational enough, or just lazy and tired.

I dunno, man. I say we celebrate this day by talking to new people, but maybe limit the topic to the astonishingly forward behavior of bystanders who approach them for conversation.