“How are you?”
“Fine! And you?”
“Oh, fine!”
BOR-ING. Yes, I realize this most-common exchange of social greetings is efficient and polite, but it’s soooooo dull, and it tells you absolutely nothing other than the respondent wants to tell you absolutely nothing, and you both should move on to something else. I might have been better off around the turn of the 20th Century, where I could have combined the elegant, arcane, and ridiculous into a sentence worth the effort of forcing air through my vocal chords, using my tongue and teeth and throat and cheeks to shape the air, then to let out of my mouth, word by overly-precious word.
For instance, some far more interesting and honest responses to the query, “How are you?”…
“Ah, lamentations! My cranium has been infiltrated by a host of germy warriors, beset upon wreaking havoc upon my sinuses! My nasal emanations are copious and thoroughly unwanted!”
“I suggest to you that the likelihood of your actual investment and genuine interest in my response pertaining to the summary of my current state is as tiny as the nipping bedbugs that plague you mercilessly every sleepless midnight.”
“Your gaze, as noted for its trajectory trained towards my bountiful bosom, causes me to imagine that my words are met only by your deafened ears; rejected, each falls like a useless metal slug to the concrete.”
“My general happiness and contentment continue unabated and unfettered by your hastily-concealed envy.”
“In all which I am involved, there is chaos, disappointment, and furious impotence, yet I still extend my hand to you in cheerful greeting.”
“It is my fondest wish at this moment in time that we may soon part, and I no longer am queried by you in this manner.”
Try one of these out today, and let me know what happens, ‘k?
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman