Striking up a conversation with a stranger is like eating oysters — an acquired taste.

Both of which I have a strong hankering for, though I don’t partake in as much as I’d like.

I don’t mean small talk, though that’s perhaps the kernel from which it can sprout. The banal back-and-forth of a “How are you? Good, you? Good,” isn’t ideal, but sometimes it’s all we can muster in this fraught world that begs for our attention and time.

Rather, it’s the small talk when someone dares to jump its confines, daring to take the conversation deeper by going off-book and asking a better question or offering an honest response. From that can spring an exchange that leaves both parties feeling enriched. And it doesn’t have to be an hourlong chat. Even just five minutes of deeper-than-skin-level talk can leave us buzzing and feeling better about the world.

A few weeks ago, I dared to make that leap — and with someone likely not often the recipient of a conversational gambit.

His name was Raymond and he sat in a wheelchair because he was missing half of one of his legs. I came across him in the alley next to my parking garage one day after work on a beautiful late-August afternoon.

We acknowledged each other and he said, “How are you?” I was this close to saying OK, thanks, and moving on with my day, but I wasn’t OK. A frustrating thing had happened and I was stewing. And because I’d interviewed Tom Karrel, the author of the new book “The Lost Art of Random Conversations,” a few hours earlier, I was feeling motivated to open up my heart one solid quarter of an inch.

So I told Raymond I actually wasn’t great and he responded to my bid for attention in a warm, curious way that caught me off guard. Sometimes, these bids go nowhere. People don’t have the time to listen or the energy to hold someone else’s bad day. But Raymond turned toward me, instead of away, and asked what was wrong. I felt the black cloud in my chest break up a little.

What happened next was a sweet, little conversation between two strangers. I found out Raymond was a Springs native who went to Coronado High School for a while. He’d worked a bunch of odd jobs. Lost his leg after accidentally stepping in a street grate. And being in a wheelchair on the street scared him.

After about 10 minutes, I said goodbye and noticed the black, rumbling thundercloud of my day had dissipated into a fluffy gray cloud with only a slight chance of rain, thanks to a random chat with a stranger I might never see again.

“What if your next conversation changed your life?” Karrel had told me earlier. “You never know where a conversation might lead.”

Karrel is a connoisseur of random conversations. He opens his book with one that took place in 2019 at a Chipotle, where he and his dad had lunch. A man wearing a medical mask and carrying latex gloves passed them on their way out. Post-pandemic, this might not seem that odd, but back then it was intriguing, so Karrel asked how his day was going. The man answered that it was the best day of his life. Karrel responded to the juicy bid for connection and learned the man had just become a first-time grandfather.

The exchange later inspired Karrel’s dad to reflect on becoming a father and inspired Karrel to share his own hope of starting a family, which he’d never talked about before with his dad. From that initial curiosity about a stranger’s well-being came a multitude of vulnerable, relationship-escalating revelations.

“Phones, COVID, AI are all creating a snowball effect and making us less social. They’re atrophying our curiosity muscles,” Karrel said. “The best way for those who feel isolated and spend too much time on the phone is to build face-to-face connections with strangers. I worry that talking with neighbors in the community is fading.”

Conversations with people you know can also be uplifting, but there’s something energizing about talking to a stranger. Maybe because there’s no history, no knowledge of who they are or what they believe, nothing other than what you each choose to share. And it allows you to respond in ways that might differ from how you respond to someone you know. Maybe you’re more willing to share private bits of information about yourself with someone you might never see again, like a momentary sidewalk confessional. Of course, I’m not advocating trauma dumping on the next person who queues up behind you at the DMV, but a tiny reveal or inquiry can go a long way.

So why don’t we do it more often? Why don’t we spend a few extra minutes of our days talking to strangers when the benefits can be so nourishing?

At least part of it is the fear of getting shut down or feeling foolish, which Karrel thinks is valid but shouldn’t stop you.

“My positive spin is that those conversations are just as important for people working to practice this,” Karrel said. “We have to face our fear by facing the fear itself. When we get shut down, it’s never as bad as we think it’s going to be.”

There are other valid reasons not to talk to strangers. “Stranger danger” is a cliché for a reason. I don’t usually spend much time talking to strangers of the male variety in alleys, but that day I felt fine. Always adhere to your comfort level.

There’s also the fear of saying something the other person finds offensive or that you wind up having nothing in common. You could feel embarrassed or ashamed, two emotions that put the kibosh on many things we’d like to try.

“Don’t underestimate how powerful doing this can be for you or them,” Karrel said. “My hope is that people say this is more meaningful than they expected and the antidote to a problem I didn’t know how to solve.”

Karrel likes to motivate people to try their hand at random conversations by pointing out what the future looks like if humans decide their preferred method of connection is talking to the sycophantic AI assistant Claude.

He also likes to remind people that they might have met good friends through random conversations and that a lot of us are scared to initiate and would prefer that someone else take the lead.

“If you want something in life, you might have to be the one to go first,” Karrel said. “I motivate them by saying could you be someone to bring people together?”

For me, curiosity is the foundation of a good conversation, where both people are interested in the other. It’s not one person pontificating and one person enduring said pontification. It’s asking questions, listening and responding.

“A charismatic person is more interested in the people around them than in being interesting to the people around them,” Karrel said. “We take an interest in each other.”

By simply opening your posture to someone, much like Raymond did when he turned his chair toward me, and asking a question or two, you’re already in the 90th percentile of humans, Karrel says.

“No fancy script will be better than genuine curiosity to get to know someone,” he said. “By being willing to go first, the hope is that we surround ourselves with people who take an interest in us. How do I ask them a genuine question and shut up long enough? People light up. People crave that human connection. It isn’t complicated but it takes patience and presence.”

DETAILS

“The Lost Art of Random Conversations,” by Tom Karrel (208 pages, $29.99)