I’ve noticed that there is a certain somebody who has stopped calling me. They only contacted me when either something really bad had blighted their whole existence, or when they had won the lottery, or inherited a castle or something equally as fortunate. They dressed up their public announcements for one, as caring inquiries into my life, when in fact their calls had very little to do with me, and almost EVERYTHING to do with themselves.
They would pose questions, not because they were interested in my answers, but because they were interested in being asked.
If that didn’t provide an opening, they would simply inject their other bits of random info into our conversation, as though the meanderings of our speech had organically lead us there. In reality their news items were so unsubtly delivered that had I needed to transcribe the call, I would have employed bullet points.
So you:
- got a raise at work.
- enrolled the little one into piano lessons.
- are hoping to buy a brand new car in the coming weeks.
The thing is I’m not averse to sharing in the joys of others. In fact I love it when the people around me have good news. It comes from my upbringing, which basically boiled down to:
- Live good.
- It’s nice to be nice.
- Don’t envy others.
- Oh and don’t EVER let any policeman, woman or dog, knock on my door asking for you!
So if my caller (who will remain unnamed) had just called and said they had something good that they wanted to share with me, I’d be happy and this blog wouldn’t need writing. The thing is they never did. I can only presume that they also noticed the timeliness of their calls and employed this tactic to make me feel loved and not simply used. It didn’t work; but what got me more than the deception was their belief that I was dumb enough to not notice. Politeness and stupidity look alike to some people. Anyway as I said, they’ve stopped calling. Thank God for Facebook statuses. It seems Mark Zuckerberg has taken the burden.
Musings of a Serial Procrastinator 