The opposite art to Making People Talk is making them sorry they said something unkind.
After its defeat in World War One, the part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire that became today’s Hungary lost its outlet to the sea. Hungary became landlocked. It still had a few admirals, however, and one of them, Admiral Horthy, became Hungary’s chief of state at the time of World War Two.
Adolf Hitler sent his emissary, Von Ribbentrop, to Budapest to pay a state visit to the Hungarian leader, and Horthy hosted a state dinner featuring limitless quantities of Hungary’s finest wines. Ribbentrop got a little giddy toward dessert, and in a coarse and derisive tone said, “I am amused, Mr. Horthy, that you carry the rank of admiral. Hungary doesn’t have a navy. Hungary doesn’t have a seaport. Hungary doesn’t even have a seacoast. How is it, then, that Hungary has a leader who’s an admiral?”
“That shouldn’t strike you as anything strange,” replied Admiral Horthy. “After all, doesn’t Nazi Germany have a minister of justice?”
Timid singles know the tortured feeling that says, upon spotting someone attractive, “If only I could start a good conversation, neither one of us would be single a year from now.” Not everyone can live up to playwright Charles MacArthur when he had that same feeling upon spotting Helen Hayes at a party one night, but his next move shows how far a little imagination can take us upward from, “Hi, haven’t we met someplace before?”
MacArthur simply grabbed a fistful of peanuts from one of the trays, rushed over to Helen Hayes, and said, “Cup your hands in front of you!”
As the startled Miss Hayes did so, he dropped the peanuts into her hands and said, “I wish they were emeralds!”
They, of course, eventually married.
Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill have too many verbal triumphs credited to them. Let’s ration ourselves to one exhibit from each.
Sycophants, opportunists, hangers-on, phonies and cronies abound around the source of power, just as moths and lesser insects congregate around outdoor lamps. One such marginal creature in Lincoln’s White House once awakened the President in the middle of the night crying, “Mr. President, Mr. President, I genuinely hate waking you from your sleep to bear such bad news, but our postmaster-general just died and I was wondering, sir, if you would permit me to take his place?”
“If it’s all right with the undertaker,” said Lincoln, undimmed by drowsiness, “it’s all right with me.”
Once World War Two was safely won and he was no longer Britain’s prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill became a bit less guarded about his afternoon tippling. One day, as he was walking zigzag from a lunch amply graced with the glory of the grape in the general direction of the House of Commons, a rather unspectacular-looking matron confronted him and assailed him.
“You, Sir Winston, are very drunk, and that is a disgrace.”
Mobilizing his faculties that were still intact, he managed to stop, turn, and face his accuser. He looked her in the eye as steadily as his condition permitted.
“Yes, madam,” he said. “I am very drunk. And you are very ugly.
“But,” crescendoed Sir Winston, “tomorrow, / shall no longer be drunk.”
* * *
Noah Webster, Mr. Dictionary to the English-speaking world, didn’t believe in letting pleasure get in the way of business. When Mrs. Webster entered his chamber one day and found him quite a bit more than lexically involved with the maid, she gasped, “Noah, I’m surprised!”
“No, my dear,” replied Webster, “it is / who am surprised. You are merely astonished.”
The Swiss are frequently regarded as the most humorless people on earth. That’s unfair. The Swiss simply took their century’s supply of humor and blew it all in two short sentences in the middle of World War Two.
The Swiss border with Nazi Germany was a tense belt of territory, with German and Swiss border posts separated by a half mile of no-man’s-land. The biggest danger in that particular spot in the middle of war-tom Europe was boredom.
One day the boredom was relieved. A motorcycle from the German post approached the Swiss post flying the white flag that signified an official message from the German commander to the Swiss commander.
Upon reaching Switzerland, the motorcyclist dismounted, gave a snappy salute, and handed over a huge, elaborately gift-wrapped package addressed to the commander of the Swiss border post.
Everybody gathered around as they opened it to see what was inside. They found it to be full of a commodity not uncommon wherever horses congregate.
The next day a Swiss motorcycle headed for the German post with an identical package addressed to the German commander.
The Nazi grunted at the Swiss lack of originality, but decided to go ahead and open it anyway.
To his amazement, it contained a huge block of golden, creamy, rich Swiss dairy butter along with a note that read, “My dear colleague: The ceremony you have initiated is altogether fitting and proper.
“Let us continue to send each other the best from our lands.”
Now What?
During World War Two America had the problem of providing drinking water for our downed fliers floating in life rafts sometimes for weeks and even longer, waiting for rescue.
Our scientists went to work. Obviously, only limited amounts of drinking water could be stashed aboard the rafts themselves. And the equipment to distill salt water from the sea into potable water would be too bulky and complicated to fit on a rubber raft.
It was known by marine biologists that the water inside the body of ocean fish is fresh, not salt. That sounded interesting, but not of much immediate help. Small fish are fairly easy to come by when you’re floating on a life raft. They dart and hop constantly through the water and air, and they frequently land right there in your lap. But how do you get the fresh water out?
Could they maybe come up with some kind of press that would squeeze the fresh water right out of those fish so our fliers could stretch out the length of time they could survive afloat? Nice concept, but the working models of the equipment they hoped could do that also proved to be too bulky.
Back to the foundry workshop, this time with a model made of lighter-weight aluminum.
That didn’t work either. Still too bulky for a life raft.
Science was down but not out. Wasn’t there something lighter and smaller that could fit on a raft that could extract fresh water from ocean fish? What shape would it have to be? How small could they get it?
Doors were closed. Calls were taken by secretaries. This was one they really wanted to solve.
Finally, sheepishly and with some embarrassment, several of the scientists came to the conclusion almost simultaneously that the ideal equipment for this mission would be about the same size, the same shape, and have the same features as the human mouth.
That was the end of the research project.
Instead of a piece of mechanical equipment fitted to our fliers’ life rafts, they merely added a line to the survival manual that advised fliers awaiting rescue in the middle of oceans to try to catch as many fish as they can and chew them well!
It worked. Lives were saved.
Making People Talk is much the same kind of proposition. Those who feel themselves no good at talking feel themselves so very no good at it that they don’t even try. It’s much easier to ache while the better talkers—the “conversationalists”— get all the attention and approval and results. It’s much easier to relax and envy those who seem to have an automatic “gift of gab.”
Now, at graduation time, we remind you of one of the very first lessons, the most important one of all: Assume the Burden.
Force yourself to be conscious that there is a conversation locked up there somewhere between you and the person you’re allegedly “talking to” and that it’s your job to find it, free it, and let it prance. You will sponsor that conversation. You will nurture that conversation.
As in the case of obtaining fresh water at sea, you don’t need e
laborate “equipment”—a strategy, a game plan. The lumps will melt, the stone walls will vaporize, faster and faster each time as you remember to “chew,” to Assume the Burden. Try to visualize either a pile-driving coach like Knute Rockne or Vince Lombardi or an equally energized Marine drill sergeant commanding you to “Get in there now and talk"
The final lesson is equally chew-the-fish simple, yet failure to invoke it results regularly in communications lapses, disappointments, breakdowns, failures, and catastrophes.
Everybody who interviews people for a living will quiver with empathy upon reading this oft-enacted scenario.
The representative of the author—or the director, the playwright, the executive director, the chief engineer—calls the producer of the talk show and swears that the guest he’s asking the TV or radio show to consider is articulate enough to make Norman Vincent Peale sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger; sufficiently scintillating, in fact, to show up on the Fordham seismograph as an earthquake in Guatemala.
Our producers then come to us and repeat that praise. We’re intrigued. We make our living from articulate guests. We say yes.
The instant the guest arrives, we know what we’re in for. His handshake, lack of eye sparkle, absence of energy, and overall silent sourness make him seem less a candidate for interview than for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The red light goes on, indicating we’re live on the air. And all of a sudden it’s obvious this “killer of a communicator” can’t talk. We lovingly guide him over his target. We toss him leads and openings like underhand softballs. And all to no avail. He couldn’t ad-lib a belch after a Kurdish wedding feast.
Finally, the ordeal is over. Listeners have long switched to more exciting attractions, like to a station playing a civil-defense test tone. We can only hope that our sponsors, station owners, and program director aren’t listening. We can only hope they’re in a room somewhere together telling each other how great we are, especially with “tough guests”!
Eventually it ends. We fake a “Nice show” comment, a teeth-gritting and tongue-biting good-bye, and wait for the carbolic acid level in our spleen to subside.
The payoff comes in the elevator. People who know me— in fact, people on my staff whom that guest didn’t know were on my staff—have been anonymous passengers on the same elevator as the guest as he and his public relations representative depart after the interview. They tell me what went on.
Then, they report, on that down elevator after the show, is when the “audience”—the five or six other people on the elevator—catch the great show. Then that guest is truly articulate. Then the volcano blows its cone. Then come the outraged mutterings from the angry guest about “that saprophyte SOB of a host” who “never even gave me a chance to talk about our new prototype with the cadmium castings and the fourteen-inch flange, and what in hell does he think I wanted to come on his lousy show for in the first place?”
We have traveled in this book together from Assume the Burden all the way back now to the Parable of the Parrot.
The man seeking a suitable present for his wife in honor of their fourteenth anniversary happened to pass a pet store in the shopping mall that featured a parrot in the window. That parrot, though not particularly distinguished in size or plumage, nonetheless cost seven thousand dollars owing to the remarkable fact that it spoke fourteen languages.
The man figured, “Fourteen years, fourteen languages. Hmm.” It was considerably more than he’d intended to pay for an anniversary present, but the linkup proved not just potent, but irresistible. He went in, wrote a check for the seven thousand dollars, waited while the clerk called the bank to verify, then took the parrot, perch and all, and headed for home.
He decided to mount the perch right over the kitchen sink.
He got it where it fit best, put the parrot on the perch, and stood back to admire.
Suddenly he remembered he’d forgotten the birdseed.
He ran back down to the pet store, hoping to procure a supply of food for the parrot and get back home before his wife did.
Alas, she was already there when he returned. She flung herself upon him with uncommon affection.
“Darling,” she exuberated. “I didn’t think you’d even remember our anniversary, much less surprise me with such a marvelous gift.
“You remembered how much I love pheasant,” she continued. “Well, I’ve got him plucked. I’ve got him slit. I’ve got him stuffed. He’s already in the oven, and he’ll be ready in about forty-five minutes.”
“You’ve got him what?" the husband asked in shock. “You’ve got him where? That was no pheasant,” spat he. “That was a parrot! And, what’s more, that parrot cost seven thousand dollars because that parrot spoke fourteen languages!”
“Is that so?” said she. “Then why the hell didn’t he say something?”
Making People Talk Page 23