Industry colleagues reunite after two years for in-person lunches with a side of unrestrained conversation.

I meet a certain friend periodically for lunch. I value his company and conversation. Time with him is never dull. He runs an EMS firm, also never dull. His work provides daily material for stories. He tells those stories well. Sometimes I’m privileged to hear them at our lunches. Talk flows with an easy and relaxed familiarity, a kind of relief. Sometimes the food gets cold. No matter.

Our discussions are more urgent now because the pandemic preempted our lunches for two years. We have a lot of pent-up opinions to catalogue and classify. Add to that winter’s natural chill, which enforces a certain introspection. Two years is a long time to accumulate vent-worthy prejudices. Like a trusted confidante, our resumed midday dialogue is most welcome – and good therapy.

These exchanges with my friend take place in a bullshit-free zone. No topic is sacred. No opinion is off-limits. Salesmanship and posturing are implicitly discouraged. Aside from the standard business-related talk, we risk diverting into politics, history, science, philosophy, religion, child-raising, youthful folly, renewed inflation, government, taxes, hiring difficulties – whatever suits us at that moment.

Or how the metaverse will save us, one contorted axiom at a time.

Ambrose Bierce, of sainted memory, is known for a Devil’s Dictionary, a cynic’s primer on human behavior, laid out in Noah Webster style.

Pity he strayed into hostile territory in bandit-infested Northern Mexico in 1913, never to be seen again. Maybe someone lurking in the sagebrush took offense at imagined slights in the Dictionary. People are so thin-skinned.

Pity also that he lived one hundred years too soon. Bierce missed his moment. Obfuscation has exploded, rivaling worthless college degrees (or maybe because of them). A euphemistic pandemic with no known vaccine, for which we need a new dictionary, has infiltrated our lexicon. Straight talk in professional settings is frowned upon, covertly if not overtly. Blunt talk is often memorable and career-threatening. Verbal mush is benign and soon forgotten. As the author of the Bartleby column in the Nov. 20, 2021, edition of The Economist noted, concerning contemporary biz-speak, “People rarely say what they mean, but hope that their meaning is nonetheless clear. Think Britain, but with paycheques. To navigate this kind of workplace, you need a phrasebook.”