On talking... or whatever it is I do around people

Hi, how are you? Crazy weather right?

Simple if nothing else, these conversation starters may not make you the most well liked person in the world, but at least they get people talking…. right? I mean the weather in Lancaster is super bipolar, and therefore usually a suitable topic.
I wouldn't really know. It’s not that I haven’t tried, I have, believe me, I have. Not that I don’t want to connect as I assure you again, it seems at times to be the sole goal of my efforts. Then, what is holding me back? Nerves? I don’t think so, I don’t get nervous about talking to people but I just don’t understand people, perhaps worse I can’t understand my own brain.
At times it seems that it’s my worst enemy, just picture for a moment I were a fighter jet (bear with me) and a good one at that, I am talking top of the line brand spanking new super-secret research project and my brain was the pilot. I have just embarked on my first combat mission (I am coming to a point soon… I think) well at first sight of an enemy, even one which is far out gunned, my brain hits the eject button. By the time I realize it was just a weather balloon the pilot has already jettisoned and is floating softly to the ground as the now out of control multi-billion dollar jet plummets to the earth….
Perhaps I am being a bit melodramatic but that’s how it feels at times. Suddenly and without warning my mental faculties cease mid conversation, and I am left silent and confused, incapable of communicating. All the strategies and planning in the world can’t save me now, mid-sentence with nothing to say. And that prodigious vocabulary that took years to hone? Gone. My now seemingly absent mind offers up a few meager samplings, about five words… typically resulting in such bumbled attempts to communicate as. Um, well, like you see…. that um like um…. bye.
I do understand that it is always safe to ask questions as long as you have a genuine interest and can do so without repeating yourself or sounding creepy, but honestly I have the tact of a stampede of elephants, and that’s being generous. It’s not because I’m not confident, just ask me, I’m awesome. But finding something… anything to say that doesn't get weird stares often feels like and impossible task.
Today I won’t be offering any answers, just questions. Does anybody else feel like this sometimes? What do you do to help keep up the conversation that you have gotten yourself into?