Thursday, November 04, 2004

Old Question. New Answer.

If one likes to be honest with people, how much of a struggle is it when you're having a down period and someone perkily inquires, "How are you today??"

I don't ever want to drag someone down and the overused answer of "fine" is hardly ever true. I have tried different variations of "alright", "okay" or "getting by." But those all create huge concerns to people that I don't necessarily want to share the nitty gritty of my life with. Yet, I still can't seem to answer "fine" just to get past them without seeming rude.

My latest attempt at answering this question is to name the day of the week. So, that conversation goes like this:

Greeter: "How are you today?"
Answer: "Well, it's Thursday."

Amazingly, this seems to inspire great waves of conversation. One woman actually replied to me the following:

Greeter: "Yes. Hey, it IS Thursday! Wow, just another day to the weekend! Thanks for the uplifting thought."

I kid you not. I figure next I'll move on to listing geography. This opens up so many more answers! Like this:

Greeting: "How are you today?"
Answer: "Oh, I'm feeling like Oklahoma today, I think."

But, then, yesterday I was inspired by an e-mail devotion I received. Why not quote scripture references? This might go like this:

Greeter: "How are you today?"
Answer: "Oh, I'm definitely feeling 2 Corinthians 4:8-11 today."

(sigh) Hmm. Well, we are supposed to be witnesses, right?

5 Comments:

At 12:31 PM, Blogger Michael said...

this blog rocks. you rock. keep rockin.

 
At 12:32 PM, Blogger Jammie J. said...

Hi Yankeebob! I like your answer. :) Sometimes I wake up in not so good of a mood, which throws a monkey wrench into that answer sometimes. :/ LOL.

My name is not too terribly common, as far as I know. There are a few of us, though, most commonly spelled Janette. I agree with your summarization of the blog world.

On the blog world thing, in my profile I list my daily blog ... I wonder how it is that so many people end up on my spiritual blog? Not that I'm complaining ... just curious. Hmm.

 
At 7:25 AM, Blogger RedFred said...

When people ask me "what's up" I look up and say the first thing I see, usually celing tiles. Mostly they look at me kinda wierd but I like that!

Another one that works well for me is "Same ole same ole" doesn't really give much information and keeps it vague enough. Another personal favorite, is "another day another wooden nickel".

For me it's kinda wierd as in the UK we don't seem to say that so much, and if we do ask we actually mean it as a honest question rather than a salutation. It took me ages to get used to shopkeepers talking to me, back home people would just flee the store muttering about the pschotic man behind the counter who talks to you...

 
At 1:47 PM, Blogger Jammie J. said...

LOL. What makes your comment funny to me, is one of the things I told my X is that I got more interaction from the checker at the grocery store than I did from him. It was true. But, he didn't like the honesty of it.

 
At 10:18 PM, Blogger RedFred said...

Happy to say I have virtually zero contact with my X unless it concerns our daughter, and thankfully that need seldom comes up either.

 

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