Like many here on the Straight Dope, I am a socially maladjusted misfit. I’m 51, and have gained the maturity to acknowledge this. And because I have been like this since I was a child, I never learned how to deal with many social situations, and parties in particular.
This is not to say that I don’t have friends. Small groups of people I already know, no problem at all. I can talk to friends and acquaintances, make jokes and be generally amusing and reasonably charming.
But I have no idea how to deal with a party. I’m always deeply uncomfortable, and I have no clue about how one walks up to a stranger and starts a conversation.
A friend died ten years ago. He was a very popular guy, and every year since he died, his friends have thrown a big party celebrating his life - hundreds of people. I had avoided going to any of these parties because I feared the discomfort of a party situation. Finally, a decade after he died, a mutual friend insisted that I go.
It was as bad as I feared. This group probably contained the greatest number of people I could know. Out of a several hundred people at the party, I’m sure I had met at least a hundred, and been in the homes of at half that number.
Some people have the knack of interposing themselves into a group, a conversation, or just starting up a conversation with random people.I don’t. I wound up sitting by myself into the friend wanted to leave.
So, what is the trick to these things? How do you start conversations? What didn’t I learn?