Bad Dinner Table Conversation Topics

One of life's most uncomfortable sounds—falling somewhere between Chalkboard Fingernails and The Chittering Noise Insects Make In Movies—is the Dinner Silence.

Whether you're at a nice restaurant or your girlfriend's parents' dining room, the longer you sit there surrounded by clinky silverware and awkward, polite coughs, the more inclined you are to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. Do not do this. At the very least, be sure not to blunder into one of the basic Bad Dinner Table Conversation Topics.

Note: These don't all apply in every situation. If dinner is a bag of chalupas eaten in a friend's car, and the only table involved is metaphorical, feel free to be as absurd as you'd like.

1. Politics
If you get enough people in the same room, it is 100% guaranteed that one of them will become outraged over the most harmless political thing you can possibly say. Every political topic is a minefield, except that the mines are weird, shouty tirades that make everyone want to crawl under the table.
Example:
You: "Abraham Lincoln was a tall president."
Wild-Eyed Uncle Billy, Who You've Never Met Before: "That's what the Masonic Lizardman Conspiracy wants you to think! Lincoln was two short presidents who took turns standing on each other's shoulders!"

2. Ridiculous Anecdotes
This is a tricky one, because you will only realize an anecdote is too ridiculous when you're already halfway through it. Selflessly, you've tried to break the tension of Dinner Silence with some moderately-amusing story, but before you know it, your brain is going, "Stop it stop it what are you doing???????" and you realize that what you're describing is a felony.
Example: "So I just could not find my pants anywhere, and everyone at the McDonald's was looking all embarrassed, and the manager was demanding to know how I got stuck in the ball pit like that. And that's when I heard the sirens."

3. Almost Anything Animals Do
There's a reason most families don't feed the dog from the dinner table, or ask the cat if it would prefer soup or salad. This reason is that animals are kind of gross. They play in (or eat) our garbage, their hygiene is unimpressive, and most of them are naked. Steer clear of anything more involved than, "I got a cute puppy! It is the cutest puppy."
Example: "Do you know how many babies a spider can have? Probably millions. Millions of spider-babies."

4. Anything Your Body Does Inadvertently
This one is probably obvious. We're only one step above the Things Animals Do level when the stuff we're doing is not on purpose. Sure, how much you threw up yesterday is important to you, and possibly to your stomach virus, but that's about it. Whatever your body is doing, just be silently impressed with yourself and leave it at that.
Example: "Wow, I stink!"

5. The Weird Dream You Had Last Night
Bizarre dreams are the perfect example of something that interests exactly one person (you). The mysterious nonsense your brain craps out when you're asleep will only ever be relevant to someone else if (s)he actually appears in the dream, in which case you've just seamlessly transitioned from boring to creepy.
Example:
You: "Hey Craig, I had a dream about you last night. YOU'RE IN MY DREAMS AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT, CRAIG. Pass the ketchup, please!"
Craig: (calling the police)

6. How Terrible the Food Is
Let's say that the food is objectively pretty terrible. Two things are true here: one, everyone else already realizes that there are somehow bones in the mashed potatoes, and two, you're about to criticize whoever made them, possibly someone at the table. Politely abstaining from the deadly food is fine, but snarky comments become less acceptable as the setting gets fancier.

What's the worst thing you've ever said at a dinner table?

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