invasive personal questions for the win

But before we get to that? Ubaldo8, baby.

Okay! To the point! This morning while I was waiting for the bus, an old man with an indeterminate European accent at the bus stop, whom I often see early in the a.m., told me that he sees *me* all the time too, and proceeded to ask me all about my personal business. Now, I wanted to tell him that if he noticed me on his bus frequently, he should make up a little story for himself about who I am, where I am going, and what I'm gonna do when I get there, much like I do to the Possibly Irish Dannys of the world. But good manners or, possibly, lack of balls kept me from saying that I would prefer not to discuss the details of my life with a complete stranger or, to put it more briefly, "none of your business."

It reminded me of how all the advice to the shy and the socially anxious says that if you need to make small talk with people you don't know, you ought to ask them questions about their lives, because "people love to talk about themselves." I always hear that and go, uh, no. There is nothing that will make me more uncomfortable than people I don't know asking me questions about my life. I do have the idea that part of that is just because my life is so screwed up. I suppose if I had a devoted husband, 2.2 beautiful children who were just about to graduate from Ivy League universities, a book deal, a Mercedes, and a law degree, I'd be just thrilled to spill that on anyone who wanted to speak to me, and lots of people who didn't. But, no, seriously, in general my policy is that if I want you to know anything at all about me, I'll tell you. Otherwise don't go invading my privacy. If you wanna make small talk, discuss the fucking weather or baseball. We can have a nice chat about Ubaldo.

I find this particularly hard now in relation to D, of course. For instance, in work, I have a lot of families that I have seen for many many years, and they know I have a kid, and through the years it's been "Oh, how old is your son now? What school is he at?" and so forth. Innocuous and polite. But now it's, "Oh, how old is your son? What's he doing now?" And while that is, on the face of it, also innocuous and polite, these are people who are not my close personal friends*** and I don't particularly feel like explaining to them that he's disabled, that he has a form of schizophrenia. I also don't want to lie. I usually say something about how he's had some serious health problems, but that he's doing better, and count on them being sensitive enough not to press for further details. But it makes me think, you know, that's a loaded question. For every stranger or distant acquaintance whom you ask how their young adult child is doing who's gonna proudly tell you he's graduating from MIT or she's in the Peace Corps in Rwanda saving the world, there's another whose kid is in rehab or prison or the psych hospital, and your innocuous and polite question is gonna twist the knife in their heart just a little bit. I dunno. I myself now stick to vague general inquiries like "How's the family?" which satisfy politeness, can be answered in detail if the person *wants* to spill and passed off with an "oh, pretty good," if they don't.

And I never ask strangers on public transportation to explain where they are going and why. The fake lives I make up for them are, I'm sure, more interesting than the real answers anyway.

xoxo

***There are a select few parents of patients whom I do feel bonded enough with to tell them real details about D, but they are very small in number.