How are things with
you today?
I looked at him for a carefully timed 3.7 seconds before
replying: ‘What?’
How are things with
you today?
‘Pretty much as they were yesterday. And the question isn’t
worth asking anyway.’
He turned away to get the cream out of the fridge, mumbling
something about only trying to make polite conversation. But it isn’t polite
conversation. It’s contrived; it’s superficial; it’s what passes for polite
conversation in the soulless corporate mindset; it’s unimaginative and
disingenuous. It would have been marginally better if he’d said ‘I see it’s
started raining.’ Conversations about the weather are also superficial and
unimaginative, but we all do it sometimes and at least it isn’t asking a
personal question to which he has no right to receive an answer, especially
when I know that he doesn’t really give a tuppeny toss about how things are
with me today.
I’m waiting for the day when my end is known and near, and
then when the man in the coffee shop asks ‘How are you today?’ I can answer ‘Dying.’
He will probably smile and continue: ‘You mean dying for lunch?’, and I can say
‘No, dying of a terminal illness.’ For once the conversation won’t be
superficial, and I will be genuinely interested to see how he reacts. I wonder
how long it will be.
Meanwhile, I had a conversation of slightly more substance
with the woman clearing the tables, just so that at least one of the staff didn’t
get the mistaken impression that I’m a miserable git.
The next post will probably be about British and French
political elections. These are stressful times in more ways than one, and the
capacity for humour is in recession.
No comments:
Post a Comment