Let me tell you how bad...

The first thing I noticed about Knoxville was the pervasive friendliness of its residents. Sure, I've run into a few bad beans--usually jack-jawed country girls with attitudes bigger than their bleachy-teased hair--but generally folks around here are nice. They'll give you directions (needed or not). They'll warn you off anything they think might give you a bad impression of their beloved city. They'll "hon" you, and then bless your heart when you open your mouth and say something they don't like at all; but mostly, they see you and interact with you. They grant you personhood, and I've become fond of the habit.

Northeasterners, by contrast, tend to be tight-lipped, bristly and just a bit aggressive if they think the situation warrants it. I spent 16 lonely months in upstate New York. Yes, I made some friends, and they've turned out to be good friends indeed. What I missed, though, was small talk, that social lubricant that makes every encounter a little more pleasant. I often felt like a ghost as I passed through the grocery checkout line or waited for postage at the post office. If I was abducted off the street, would anyone even remember seeing me that day? I'm afraid the answer was probably "no" in many cases.

Here in eastern Tennessee, as in the Midwest, people pursue small talk as an art form. How about that weather? Or those Vols? When did you move here? Where do you live? Are you churched? The list of seemingly meaningless topics never ends, but make no mistake, small talk is deadly serious here. Where one attends church and lives says a lot about them, and the answers to those questions can and will open up whole new lines of conversation. In this way, small talk most assuredly becomes social lubricant.

All of that aside, sometimes small talk can give hilarious insight into the life of another person. Take the fishmonger at the nearby specialty grocery store. (How I love those aisles full of spendy food items--gorgeous boxes of $8 couscous with entire narratives of flowing fields of organic wheat and tender harvesting or the neat rows of marmalades with poetic names. Here we find aspirational living at its finest.) After I asked him how long salmon might keep (not long at all), he regaled me with a tale of calamari gone bad, way-way bad:

Mr. Fishmonger (I never got his name) used to live and work in Chicago. One Friday evening, his team, as a reward for good performance, was taken to a very fine, family-owned Italian restaurant. Of the 40 attendees, 17 ate calamari served on bruschetta with a fresh salsa of tomatoes and onions. "Delicious," said Mr. F. "Truly marvelous."

The next day, while sitting on his couch Mr. F. was overcome by stomach cramps. They were bad. Really, really bad. Then a tidal wave of illness washed over him, and it was worse. Meanwhile, across town, his friend was at the golf course, and a similar wave of nausea rolled over him. The staff carried him off the course like a stinking, soiled corpse from a battlefield, placed him on the back of a golf cart that had been modified to carry bags of fertilizer and other equipment, and removed him from the sight of decent people. In another part of the city, one of the team leads, a vice president, was rushed to the hospital and rehydrated for hours. That was only three of the 17 who were felled by the wicked calamari.

Back at his apartment, Mr. F. was trying to figure out why he was sick. He hadn't yet made the connection between the calamari and the illness; he wouldn't do that until Tuesday when all 17 of the fallen compared stories. He called an ask-a-nurse line. He searched the Internet. He worried that perhaps one of the ladies he was dating had given him some godforsaken, communicable disease. He suffered.

"How bad was it?" I asked.

Mr. F. looked around as if to see if the store was bugged. He leaned into the fish counter and beckoned for me to come near. I tilted my body toward the glass. He whispered, "Do you want to know how bad it was?"

"Yes," I whispered back and nodded. "How bad?"

He paused and seemed to assess my worthiness for what would come next: "I had to buy a new couch." At that he leaned back and crossed his arms. He radiated satisfaction as my brain processed the if-then of his proclamation. I started laughing. I laughed until I cried. A nearby couple--well-groomed and luxurious types--stared. Still I laughed, and then I wiped away tears.

"What happened next?" I asked.

"My supervisor told me he would take care of it because 17 of us were food poisoned," he said. "All I wanted was for my couch to be replaced. I should have sued. I regret letting my boss take care of it."

Not long afterward, his supervisor announced that the restaurant wanted to correct the wrong. They wanted to salvage their reputation. Their offer? Comped dinner for the food poisoned among the group.

"Dear god," I said. "How did you respond?"

What he said next is unrepeatable in polite company. Suffice to say, here in Knoxville, it was an occasion that cried out for the use of "bless your heart."