Boy, it’s a good thing we have such kooky weather in Bowling Green or I feel like sometimes we’d have nothing to talk about.

I guess I could ask you if you had a good weekend and you could ask me about mine. Maybe we could talk about what a tool that professor we had was. Or the game last night! What a doozy.

Small talk is something we don’t talk enough about. It happens everyday to countless people and is as constant and unavoidable as death. It’s an important issue, America.

Picture this scene and ask yourself how many times you’ve found yourself in this situation – even today. You’re walking to class and spot a familiar face. Not a dinner buddy or anything, just someone you’ve met once or twice. Maybe you were in the same research group for a class and became Facebook friends. But that’s it. No unrequited love or feelings of resentment; just indifference. The familiar face recognizes you too and you stop to greet each other.

Now what?

You have to engage in small talk – ask them how they are, what’s new and “how about this weather?” You might as well be a meteorologist for how many times you talk about the weather per day.

That is not to say that small talk is a bad concept. It’s a necessary component of being an upright, social citizen. You want to acknowledge that you recognize that person. You might not have any information to pass on and neither do they, but no one wants to be rude, either.

What are you going to do, have meaningful conversations with everyone you meet? That’d be even worse.

It’s just that we need new topics to talk shop about.

Naturally, there are certain issues that are basically off-limits. It would be a bad idea to ask your friend how their day is and then follow it up with, “Who do you like better: God or Mitt Romney?”

Asking them if they’ve done anything racist lately is also not a great topic for polite conversation.

So I thought I could offer some ideas for acceptable fallback conversation topics. This way, when neither party has anything in particular to say, we could offer our opinions on the following:

1. Robot technology. When will robots become self-aware? Are we thinking 10 more years or is it going to be sooner? Do you have a robot shelter prepared at home?

2. Catch-phrases. What’s your favorite catch phrase? Steve Urkel’s, “You guys got any cheese?” is always a top choice, but our generation should be able to rattle off at least a half dozen without breaking a sweat. Before you know it, you need to get going and the small talk is over.

3. Yo’ momma. I guess I just feel like there aren’t enough times during the day when I get to talk about you and yo’ momma and I think it should be acceptable for polite conversation.

4. A “damn!” competition. This would be where after you exchange greetings, you and your friend compete to say “damn!” in a more badass intonation. I think most people would be best served to stretch out the vowel sound in the word, but maybe there’s creative ways to keep a succinct “damn!” equally as powerful.

5. A “dam!” competition. This would be where after you exchange greetings, you and your friend try to build a make-shift dam over wherever you’re standing. I didn’t think this one through very much, I should admit.

So, those are just a few suggestions to improve the overall quality of our small talk conversations. We’ll still essentially be saying nothing, but at least as we exchange pleasantries we could squeeze a bit more enjoyment from the process.

I think we ought to give it a shot.

What do you say?