The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [46]
A fine specimen at a dinner was a radio deejay who eagerly asked each guest’s age, leaned in for a closer look, cocked her head, and said: “Are you sure?” Later in the meal she cried out: “Ladies, who do we fancy, handsome Henry or sexy Simon?” Then she smiled at the man beside her, neither Henry nor Simon, saying in a voice of unutterable pity, “No, not you.”
Her husband, also neither Henry nor Simon, grimaced. “Her family call her the social hand grenade.”
Tactics: Don’t be offended, be awed she’s made it so far, missing so many filters. People like her build business empires. Watch carefully. If only to replenish the stock of your Shut-up Shop (see Chapter 14).
Pluses: A great how-not-to, valiantly she proves why social protocols exist. Watch her at work, carefully noting the boundaries as she crashes through.
7
DO GO ON On Wrangling Boredom
“As I was saying . . .”
Yes, he has been at the smoked salmon blinis. You turn your head. He mistakes your ear for an invitation and leans a little closer, his canapé breath hot on your cheek.
“What I was saying was . . .”
He stops. Out shoots his glass. A passing waitress tops it up: his fourth refill. How long have you been trapped?
The bore totters, regains his balance, and looks you up and down, confused.
“What’s your name again?”
Your eyes coast over to your friend, chatting merrily. She sees you, smiles, carries on. Damn her.
He notices.
“I’m sorry, am I boring you?”
“No,” you lie. “Not at all. Please, do go on.”
He beams, then frowns. “Now, what was I saying?”
Boredom provokes desperation. It was either that or disco rage that propelled my father from a Christmas party to walk seven icy miles home. A friend of mine consoles herself in similar circumstances by writing—on her ankle, with the toe of her shoe, under the table where no one else can see: “BORED,” “I’M DYING,” “HELP,” “THE END IS NIGH.”
History does not relate if anyone has in fact been bored to death, although the entertainment provision in many care homes for the elderly suggests this is not for want of trying. When you’re cornered by a bore, the sensation of life ebbing away—and going on elsewhere, where the people laugh and the sun still shines—is palpable, and painful.
To be boring is beyond bad manners. It is theft. Take that lady who wouldn’t dream of picking your pocket, yet thinks nothing of squandering your time, detailing the plot of a book you already said you’ve read. What is she thinking?
The short answer is: She isn’t. While boredom is easy to recognize when you’re inside it, it’s more difficult to tell if you are its cause. But it is your duty, and in your interests, to try.
Are you an unwitting time thief? How to judge? How to stop? And can anything be done about those dullards guaranteed to bore all of the people, all of the time?
Absolutely. Although our social lives might improve if we could sort bores from non-bores, the word’s a label, a perception, not an essence of soul. That dolt may think the same of you, or pep up given encouragement. Bores are made, not born.
Good news! Redemption is possible. Instead of hunting tame bores, then, the task is to truffle out instances of the verb, “to bore,” explore its causes, then trample it.
WHAT IS BOREDOM?
Historians argue that boredom isn’t a timeless human dilemma, but rather an evolving concept—wafted across the English Channel, ghost of the dandified ennui that held court among moping French aristocrats before the guillotine intervened. They have a point.
Though a sin, medieval “sloth” shares little of modern boredom’s character. If you spent your peasant days hacking a living from unyielding fields, rustling up tithes for fat abbots, you would not be bored, but fervently desire, as old graves do, “Rest In Peace.” Peace and quiet were valued commodities then, not boredom’s yawning ladies-in-waiting.