I hate thinking of topics. It’s literally the worst part of what I do for a living, other than the pay. So the last thing I want to do over supper, when I’m not working for a few minutes, is continue to think of topics for us to talk about. Every single night. But that’s what I have to do.

In our house, we do family dinnertime as much as possible. Experts recommend you eat as a family, which you’d think is just practical, because that’s when the food is ready.

But what do you talk about? Coming up with article topics is hard enough, but supper is every night. Can you just talk about the same stuff every night? Are you even allowed to say a dvar Torah at a weekday meal? I would ask a shaila.

So here are some fantastic conversation topics that you can talk about, to enhance your family meal. They may not be exactly the sort of topics the experts had in mind, but they are all excellent dinner conversation topics, judging by frequency that people talk about these things and also the volume.

How loudly the other person chews:

There’s really no other good time to bring this up. You can’t just be sitting in a car at a red light and say, “You chew too loud.”

“What? I wasn’t doing anything.”

This topic is bound to come up eventually. It’s a known fact that for example the volume of a man’s chewing is directly proportional to how long he’s been married. Same goes for his sneezes.

And then, over the course of this discussion, someone can point out that the person who brought this up chews plenty loud as well, plus there’s the way they slurp their soup. So this can get a whole conversation going, with everyone enthusiastically getting involved.

How nothing happened in school:

Nothing. You pay thousands of dollars in tuition, and nothing ever happens.

“Well, did you learn anything new?”

“No.”

Maybe we should talk about that.—What happened at work that put you in a mood? Nothing actually happened at work. But you have to make it into a story. Lead by example!

For example, you can complain about your customers. Customers are the worst. “My boss was annoyed again that the people who hire us to do the thing we do apparently know nothing about the thing we do.”

“My boss asked the client to send an A1C, and the customer asked, “What’s an A1C?” If you can imagine.”

And meanwhile, your spouse is nodding along, because they don’t know what an A1C is either. They’ve asked you before, multiple times, but each time they forgot, and they can only ask so often without you getting annoyed. And they’re just glad that someone’s filling the silence so they can have a turn chewing without you hearing that they’re chewing.

Why there aren’t napkins on the table:

This is an ongoing point of contention in our household. My wife is of the shita, handed down by her ancestors, that whoever sets the table should give everyone a napkin. Whereas my son believes, apparently, that she buys them for nothing.

My son has ancestors too, but this shita hasn’t fully been handed down to him yet. We’re working on it.

He needs to be given a reason every time. He asks, “Why do we need napkins?” and my wife says, “In case somebody spills.” Which is not the best answer, because if someone spills, one napkin won’t be enough. Maybe everyone should get a pile of napkins. But on the other hand, most of the time, people don’t spill. At least on that level. So then why do we need napkins at all? Mimah nafshach!

So apparently he’s learning Gemara logic in yeshiva.

Who should get up to get things that you forgot:

Because you definitely forgot something. Every meal. It’s like going away for Shabbos.

And apparently, getting up is this monumental task that should maybe not be pawned off on one’s children. You give them the smaller jobs. This one is too big.

They hate getting up, because if they do, everyone’s like, “Hey, once you’re up…”

All of a sudden, everyone thinks of a hundred things they need brought to the table. It’s like when someone goes to Eretz Yisrael, and everyone wants them to take a small package.

There’s nothing to eat here:

This conversation is usually started by one of the kids, in case you’re looking for conversations that you as an adult don’t have to start yourself. And it’s usually a kid who is waking up about this in the middle of supper, rather than an hour ago when you were asking for someone to help you make it, or earlier in the day when you were looking for suggestions of what to make.

But this kid doesn’t really continue the conversation. He takes one bite and then he’s gone, leading into the next conversation, which is about how people should come back to the table, because it’s dinnertime.

The Venn diagram of foods everyone likes is a bunch of circles that barely touch. Some of them are on entirely different pieces of paper. Whose idea was it that everyone should sit down to eat together anyway?

I’m sure there are other topics such as these that people can talk about to enhance their dinner table, but I’m going to be quiet now, because I’m a little afraid that I’ve given away too much about my home life. And yours as well.

So now I’m going to reach out: What topics do you think people should talk about over supper that may or may not be what the experts originally had in mind? What topics have you had come up over supper that you would highly recommend as something that can be discussed over and over and never get old? If you’d like to do the incredible mitzvah of enhancing chinuch and sholom bayis by helping everyone figure it out, send it in, and I can write up a second list of topics for when these get old. Or you breeze through all of them and you’re still only up to the soup.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].