February 8, 2026

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

There’s this thing about talking to someone … sometimes … actually rarely. It isn’t definable as two people having banter – jawboning about the weather, politics or family. It takes a particular someone to talk to another particular someone if there is to be the substance of a short story, even a novel expressed. It is life with some of the right buttons touched.

The hope is that we all have been a particular someone who has exchanged words with a like conversationalist. When that happens, there can be goose bumps; maybe you are kindred souls whose thoughts, feelings and attitudes closely match. Ships passing in the night, perhaps.

You need not be great friends nor longtime acquaintances. Nor lovers though conversations in the same frequency can be foreplay without act. And perhaps more satisfying.

When one person gets you, and you the other, there is reassurance of life itself. You need not be the richest, the most successful, the person with the most friends if you have a kindred connection.

Most of us share pleasantries with others – life cannot exist without communication, and so even talking about the weather, half-listening or not, reinforces socialization. It’s polite; it’s necessary.

But, ah, in that private time when you the particular someone talks – and listens, yes, listens – to the other particular someone, all frequencies except one are tuned out. The motor purrs. Even the silences between words speak.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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