What's new? How are you?

It amazes me that people still come to me for advice, or comfort, or first aid. As I slowly degenerate, my patience with everyone diminishes. As of this week it is directly proportionate to the square of the number of words spoken to me.

An example is:

Hi. (Patience 100%)
Am I interrupting? (Patience 91%)
This might be a stupid question but here goes.... (Patience -44%)

I used to try not to be rude. I've done away with that. It kept encouraging people to talk me into a self-abusive state.

Now I openly mock, berate, and simply ignore anyone who has exceeded my patience:interest ratio in a conversation, with one adjustment. Append the equation of (100(1+(|patience:interest|)) to my wife and anyone she wants me to pay attention to. Like the kids.

As if my unwillingness to endure inane dialogue was not enough of a personality fault I've recently realized I actively avoid certain types of people. It isn't based on race, colour, creed, religion, gender, age or even smell. It is based on when I saw you last.

You see polite conversation demands asking how things are going and what is new. If I have seen you in the last 6 months this is pretty safe because mostly everyone I know leads a boring life.

But so help you if I haven't seen you in more than that. The odds that you have been hired, fired, engaged, married, had a kid, had a grandkid, started a band, or begun to collect rocks goes up exponentially.

And even if you haven't had anything new or interesting happen polite society demands that I not let that be and shake you down for info until I find something that proves you aren't a time traveler or have been in prison.

The crux of the problem is I will see these people when I have somewhere else to be right away. So I have 3 choices available:

1. Meet and greet you, spending the next 30 minutes JUST outside the grocery lineup while my family waits for me to return with the required fixings for dinner.
2. Meet and greet you, but shrug you off by avoiding any leading questions of new or interesting happenings in your life. Effectively this is saying "I'm sorry you recognized me over here."
3. Boldly sneak away and hope you don't notice me. Have a back up plan of pulling the fire alarm if you do and making a run for it.

I am still slightly upset with myself for practicing that third option so frequently, albeit without ever having to use the alarm. So I apologize for my behavior, but I am confident you'd rather me treat you like a social pariah than be rude to you. That way you can continue to tell yourself "maybe he didn't see me because of his apparent neck injury and spinal fusing. Look at the poor guy limp...".

And hey, here, now, tell me: How are you? What's new?