Have you ever regretted asking someone a polite question because of the answer you receive?
Like: “How are you?” and the lengthy response is a recital of human misery.
Waiting for a haircut yesterday I heard this conversation –
Barber: “So how is Sid? I haven’t seen him for a long time.”
Customer: “Sid isn’t too good at the moment.”
Barber: “Sorry to hear that.”
Customer: “His wife found him unconscious in his den. She had to call the ambulance.”
Barber: “Oh!”
Customer: “It’s one day at a time for Sid now. We were lucky to have him home for Christmas.”
Pause.
Barber: “He was always in good shape for his age.”
Customer: “Mmm.”
Silence.
Being polite, social, or interested seems to come with conditions attached. I regret asking how someone was when I greeted them hello, on Monday.
My acquaintance immediately launched into an intensive health history, revealing dramatic experiences of all of her operations, her horrors of pain that got worse by her wanting to relive every minute of it, impressing me with a need to revisit every illness of her sickly childhood, her two pregnancies that included vivid details of her life-threatening deliveries….on and on it went.
God I got so bored, I turned off mentally until she asked if I was still listening to her, I said I was but apologized because I had to be somewhere.
She felt hurt that I wasn’t really interested to know how she was, because if I truly cared, I would have asked more questions about how she is going to manage.
As we said goodbye, she said in the next few days she will be visiting a surgeon, another operation soon….me (oh please, I am not strong enough) she saying she is wanting to be MY FRIEND….needy people scare me!