Inanities

This afternoon at work, I was treated to a treatise on the evils of carbs when I offered some leftover spaghetti to our COO. For heaven's sake, I was just being nice. A simple "No, thank you." would have sufficed.

A few hours later, I was on the phone with a young woman who's last name is Cartier. "Famous name." I quipped.

Dummy. Like she's never heard that before.

So what is it about people that we feel it necessary to point out the obvious or get on our soapboxes in the name of ordinary conversation? Why do we have to say anything at all?

Someone asks me for a light and chummily insists "Us outlaws have to stick together."

I'm an outlaw? I paid a shitload of taxes for this pack of cigarettes.

A non-smoker sees me smoking and cheerily insists "That stuff will give you cancer."

Gee, do you think that's what the Surgeon General meant in that warning on the box?

When the heathens were babies I actually had a lady confide that she'd been through fertility treatments 5 times and was never "lucky" enough to have twins. Do I really care if a total stranger conceived via test tube?

Golly I only got to have sex.

I'm guilty too. I see a co-worker in a sweater and ask if she's cold. My cube mate curls into herself and squiches her eyes and I ask if she's got a headache. Someone sneezes; I offer a home remedy for the common cold.

Why? I'm tired of it. I realize that, in this day and age, truly original thought is a myth. Still, do we have to suffer inanity of "stranger speak" just because the speaker and the listener are both human?

I am trying to redeem myself. Just last week, in a parking lot somewhere east of Kansas City, I was standing by my running car which contained my fighting children and smoking a cigarette. An inane (and well-meaning, I'm sure) stranger chidingly insisted "Did you know that's bad for you?"

My reply: Did you know that nicotine withdrawal increases irritability and aggression?

It's a shame he had pressing business inside, I would have loved to debate the point with him.