Why, when someone in front of me trips or stumbles or nearly but not quite goes down, must I say, like an old woman, “oh, careful”? It’s reasonably pointless, two seconds too late, to tell someone to be careful. Chances are the reason they stumbled or twisted their ankle has nothing to do with carelessness. And even if it did, even if that person was careless, the advice is a moment too late. Like telling a suicide five seconds after the bullet that life is worth living.

I have never been able to formulate a proper response to “What’s up?” More often than not, I grunt and walk away. It’s not that I’m anti-social although I might be, it’s that the question doesn’t really have a suitable answer. In high school, when assaulted with the question I would point skyward and say, “That way.” This never worked out really well either. When the person got it, I was a smart ass. But that was still better than the person who didn’t get it, who just looked at me quizzically like a jock might countenance a computer programmer or a champion chess player.

Similarly, “what’s new?” It sounds like a dare. My inquisitor challenging me to think of something new. Still no suitable answer. And I refuse the retort, “not much.”

On a particularly bad day during a particularly bad week in grade 11, perhaps, someone who didn’t normally talk to me quite suddenly asked, “How are you?” I was going through an existential phase. I’m not quite through it. And I looked at him and considered deliberately and said, “do you really care?” or “does it really matter?” And really it wasn’t so much that I was trying to be a jerk or even that I was one. I was commenting more than anything on the habit of asking people how other people are when they didn’t really care. And even if they cared that it shouldn’t matter a helluva lot. I was doing crappy, really. I didn’t get invited to parties (no surprise there). I had ugly clothes and bad hair and old shoes from the discount store and I didn’t play sports and my parents hated each other and I wanted desperately for somebody to ask me how I was and mean it and I was positively anal about getting 98% because it was the only thing that defined me. Or so I thought. Which amounts to the same thing. But you don’t say that when people ask you how you are. Well, anyway, I suppose that fellow never asked me how I was again, and who can blame him?

I’m better at it. For one thing I’ve got quite a lot less to be so desperate about. I was a violently desperate child.

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