Where to start, about a subject as important to everyone as getting along with others, and making friends?I bought this book and read it from cover to cover, and completely agree that everything he says makes nothing but sense, and is very helpful in enabling people to better negotiate the ins and outs of getting along in public discourse.But there is one area that is directly related to this subject that neither he nor any other author who writes about making conversation, and thus, making friends, ever even alludes to.They all pretend that there is a "level playing field," and everybody would be totally receptive to someone who was able to display all of the skills he mentions, about attracting others, and being an interesting conversation partner, etc.But the fact is that the playing field is anything but level.I have been accused of being extremely outgoing and friendly almost all of my life, and yet, I recently experienced a situation that absolutely dumbfounded me, as far as getting along with others, and I simply could not understand what in the world had happened.Even someone such as myself, who had never knowingly felt hesitant to approach someone to try to befriend them, can be easily thrown for a loop, and their social capability completely undermined, simply by running into someone who doesn't respond to our efforts to be friendly and outgoing.In essence, I'm referring to someone who simply won't talk, or can't talk. They can't respond to any comment or question you may ask of them, much beyond a yes or no.But of course, you are not aware of this. If someone doesn't respond to a friendly inquiry with an equally friendly response, we assume that there is something about us that they find objectionable, and it causes us to pull back.It doesn't occur to us that the fault might be entirely with them, and not ourselves, because we just make the benign assumption that everybody we meet is equally intelligent, or at least capable of responding normally.But this is often a big mistake, even if we don't realize it. We may be confronted with someone who doesn't respond in a friendly manner - not because there's anything wrong with us, but because there's something wrong with him.I'm talking about a mental health issue that affects over 17 million American adults, which renders them unable to adequately interact with others in social conversation, which is called Social Anxiety, or Social Phobia, and is devastating, not only to those who have it, but also to anybody they come into contact with on a daily basis; namely, us, the general public.The way it negatively affects somebody such as myself, is that inasmuch as the victims of this disorder appear for all the world to be completely normal, as to their general appearance and demeanor, so we just assume that they are normal, and proceed to attempt to talk to them, and expect to have our questions and comments reciprocated, as we feel it within our right to expect to happen.But the fact is that we sometimes do not get the response we expect to get, and we immediately assume that we, ourselves, have some sort of problem.We may get a response that is odd, or confused, or has no bearing on the question we asked.For some reason, our natural reaction is to think that we failed to adequately get our question across, and it's all our fault.This is absolutely mind-boggling in the effect it has on a normal person, because he invariably assumes that the problem is with himself, when in fact, he has no problem whatsoever. But he is convinced that he suddenly has developed this totally bewildering loss of ability to relate to other people, because he isn't getting any feedback to his efforts to even have a casual conversation. He can't seem to get a sensible answer to almost anything he says, and this begins to seriously take its toll on your mental health.In my case, I found myself in a situation where I was literally surrounded by people with this condition, and had no idea of anything at all about it:I had joined the Men's Club at a golf course I played frequently, and this situation manifested itself shortly after I became involved. I didn't put two and two together right away, and did not realize that something was desperately amiss, and in fact, it took me several years to become aware that things just weren't right.Just imagine the thoughts that would go through your mind if you suddenly found yourself in the midst of people who did not react to your questions or comments as if they understood what you were saying.If you only ran into an occasional person who didn't react appropriately to your attempts to talk to them, it would stand out as being an anomaly. But if this is more often the norm, rather than the exception, you become completely confused, and think that the problem is surely with yourself, because it doesn't seem possible that everyone around you has suddenly lost their sanity.And yet, that was almost exactly what had happened.Except that it wasn't actually a case of anything happening suddenly; this had been the situation for quite some time, within this particular group of people, but it was just that I was newly injected into that atmosphere, and I was the one who didn't fit in.Of course, not everyone I ran into had this problem. But enough of them did, that it was extremely confusing, and made me seriously concerned about my own mental condition.Just to be clear: At the time it is happening, you are not aware that you are surrounded by people with mental problems. You don't figure this out until much later. All you are aware of is that you are having great difficulty in trying to deal with the people you encounter on a daily basis. You suspect that something has gone terribly wrong, but you aren't sure exactly what it is.The thing that makes it so totally confusing is that not everyone you encounter reacts in this way. Some people act perfectly normally, and you wonder if the problem isn't actually with yourself.But then, the next person you attempt to talk to, you get this strange, mysterious sense of a complete inability to penetrate through to their mind, and receive an acknowledging response that would indicate that they understand what you are saying.If you receive a response at all, it is often very odd, and completely unrelated to what you have just said.No matter how "together" anyone may appear to be on the surface, it is incredible how completely you can be fooled, because they are experts at disguising the fact that they have any problem whatsoever.Or rather, most of us tend to just automatically assume that we're dealing with someone who can respond normally to our questions or comments, and when we happen to run into someone who cannot, they're certainly not going to volunteer that they have a problem. They will just let us continue to assume that they are perfectly OK.In an effort to be brief, let me just say that there are many more people than you would ever imagine who simply cannot respond to any overture you might make to even try to talk to them. They literally can't put a sentence together of much more than 4 or 5 words, but we may very well be trying to chat them up, and not have a clue that there is any problem whatsoever. They can, however, usually say a few words, such as, "I don't know," and this tends to disguise the fact that this is pretty much all they can say.In most cases, when we receive only a brief few words in response to a question we have asked, we don't get unduly alarmed; we just assume that the person we are talking to is someone of few words, or not particularly talkative.But after awhile, when we realize that we virtually never succeed in getting any sort of back-and-forth conversation going, we start to suspect that there has to be a reason for it.Speaking only for myself, and speaking especially about my state of mind before I became fully aware of how pervasive the problem was, I had no reason to suspect anything untoward, or any actual reason for this reluctance that I so frequently encountered, to have what I regarded as a normal, give-and-take conversation between two people who belonged to the same golf club.I don't remember specifically what did it, but at some point the full realization hit me that these people just simply could not talk, and I was almost literally surrounded by them!This is a devastating state of affairs, especially for the ones afflicted with this condition, but it also causes almost complete confusion to anybody attempting to communicate with them.And if I, who usually has no problem at all in communicating with people, can get so confused in trying to deal with someone who simply can't respond, how would you imagine that would affect someone who was already unsure of their own social abilities, and was actually trying to reach out and connect with others, and ran into one of these poor unfortunate souls?In fact, this condition may not even be so much of a problem to those who have it. After all, they have had the problem for a long time - probably every day of their life - and have surely learned, in that time, how to deal with it.But to the other people of society, who don't have any idea that they have encountered someone who simply cannot respond to anything they say with an appropriate response, it is bewildering.And so, it is very often the case that all the rules are out the window, such as he describes in such great detail in this book, simply because we may very well be trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't have a prayer of being able to talk to us, or to anybody else.But the big, overwhelming obstacle is, first of all, to be made aware of this whole situation before we can even attempt to solve it, which puts us back to square one, of trying to learn how to meet and converse with and befriend others.But the damage to our fragile psyche has been done - to the extent that we will no longer fully trust anybody we meet in the future, because we will be very much aware that we may be talking to someone who might never be able to understand, or respond, and that is extremely sad - for them, and for us.If there is any plus at all to be gained from this situation, it is only that we do invariably learn from our daily experiences.About the only thing one can say is that once we've incurred an incident such as this, we at least recognize it as being something that has happened to us before, and we are not caught completely flat-footed.Since it is a familiar situation, we can quietly acknowledge to ourselves that it is simply something that is happening yet once again, and not be surprised or taken aback.