“How are you, Sir?” asks the over-friendly assistant in my local Co-op.
“I feel like shit,” I don’t reply. Instead I come up with a more suitable response, one that will hopefully not encourage a further question about my well-being. “I’m all right, thanks.”
“How are you?” is surely the most stupid and pointless question of all time because you only want one answer: that everything is good. You don’t really want to hear the full story when the next person in the line wants 20 Bensons, a box of matches and a copy of the Sun. Imagine how the young fellow would react if I told things as they were?
“How are you today, Sir?”
“I feel like shit. I feel like shit most mornings because I haven’t slept well because my brain, or what’s left of it, won’t switch off. I’d feel much worse if I didn’t take these little tablets – a shit load of them actually…”
“I understand, Sir. Is there anything else I can get you?”
“And now the dark nights are coming along, it just gets worse. The dark nights and the dark mornings. And it’s so bloody cold. (Turns round to the long line of customers behind me.) “It’s freezing today, isn’t it?” (Everyone looks to the floor.) Anyway – you asked how I was. I have felt better, but I am getting old, older by the day and every day gets quicker than the one before. My ankle clicks horribly every time I walk – an old football injury – and my back is shocking when it’s damp…”
“That’ll be two pounds, please Sir.”
“But mainly it’s the severe clinical depression that’s the worst. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy – well, I might. I’ll take a rain check on that one. Maybe my worst enemy, but maybe not: I wouldn’t wish cancer on my worst enemy so I wouldn’t wish for them to be clinically depressed either.”
“Thank you, Sir. I really do have other customers to see.”
“I know you do, but you started it. You asked me how I was. Well, I feel like shit today. I know you’re only doing your job and you’ve probably been told to ask me how I am when you obviously don’t care because we are strangers, not friends or even acquaintances. You might ask someone how they are and they’ve just lost a near relative or been told they have a terminal illness. Anyway, thanks for asking. It’s been a great half hour.”
I’d never do that, I know, so don’t worry. I just think that way. And the people who ask me how I am are actually quite nice, which is why I say “I’m all right/good/never felt better, thanks” even though I am lying through my teeth and, boy, I hate lying through my teeth.
I don’t get this in Waitrose or John Lewis, mainly because I can barely afford to walk through the entrance at either store never mind actually buy anything and, anyway, I get pulled over by the “No riff raff” sings outside.
Me making mountains from molehills, getting wound up by people whose sin is to be polite to me. What a bastard I am.
“How are you, Sir?”
“I’m just dandy thanks. And you?”
That’s better and far, far easier.
