For the longest time that was my response when someone asked the infamous question How are you? In fact, that was my response to everything. And I mean everything. When I was finally called on it, probably by my wife, of course, I trained myself to stop. I actually told people how I was really doing when prompted. That really didn’t go over to well. I either stopped people in their tracks or received the obligatory ‘that’s nice’. Come on. I answer ‘shitty’, ‘not so well today’ or something along that lines and I get a ‘that‘s nice‘! I finally realized that no one really cared. My friends did, but they knew exactly how I was doing without me even saying a word. As for everyone else … . Well, I decided to stop asking. I just acknowledged with a quick greeting and was on my way. It was rather liberating to say the least. Stacee was intrigued by this ‘human experiment’ of sorts and tried it herself. Somehow or another it blew up in her face, but that’s another entry in itself.
Then I saw The Italian Job – great movie, by the way. And that put the whole new spin on the topic. According to Donald Sutherland’s character in the movie fine means
F reaked out
I nsecure
N eurotic
E motional
I realized that sums up my entire existence the majority of the time. So I decided to come full circle and now reply with a simply ‘fine, thanks’ when asked how I’m doing. I’m content with that, really.
PS – I still don’t ask how the other person is doing though.
