.i am fine.

I have a very very bad habit. Let me give you some examples:

Person: Hey, how are you?
Me: I’m fine.

Person: What are you doing?
Me: Nothing.

Person: How was your weekend?
Me: It was good.

See the problem? No. Let me update it.

Person: Hey, how are you?
Me: I’m fine.
I could very well be…beyond not fine. My world could actually be caving in on me (in my typical dramatic way) and I would still respond….fine.

Person: What are you doing?
Me: Nothing.
I could very well be playing MJ The Experience and gotten a perfect score on Remember The Time, (which is waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy harder than Thriller), and I would still respond…Nothing.

Person: How was your weekend?
Me: It was good.
I could very well have been…well you get the pattern by now, right?

I do this allllllllllllllllllllllllllll the time. A guy pointed out to me, that I will give a generic answer, then follow it up with the most extraordinary details. When people ask these generic/greeter/convo starter questions I assume that they are just being polite, which in turn I respond politely and succinctly.

But when someone isn’t just being polite, when someone really is interested in the details of your life, the succinct answer isn’t informative and can be seen as “standoffish”. When it’s a deeper level of convo, I’ve been known to ask “You really want to know?”, as if to say here’s your opportunity to opt out of my overly verbose description to whatever banal question you posed (triple word score for me, for using an SAT word). The most amazing and simplistic response I received to that question was “Yes I want to know, or else I would not have asked.” Well hot damn, that’s just plain common sense. You’re asking because you want to know, such a novel concept. But everyone doesn’t fall into that category, which brings me back to my original quandary, “How to respond?”

Perhaps I can work on speaking in bullets, instead of speaking in colorful paragraphs. But speaking in bullets is no fun; some stories simply can’t be outlined in 2 – 3 word utterances.

Le Sigh.