Memories of the 28th Century

One of my more pleasant eccentricities is that I hate the common greeting, “How are you?” I only answer the question directly in very special circumstances, but that’s fine, because most people don’t even realize that they have asked a question.

One of my common responses is, “I don’t know either.” Most people take that wrongly and think that I meant “yet” instead of “either”. There was one person to whom I gave that reply, and he claimed that he hadn’t asked any question. He was a drug addict, so I figure that he had no idea what he said.

My intention in not answering that question isn’t to be rude or even pedantic, but I think it is too personal a question to ask strangers at random. I sometimes give a straight and honest to that question when the asker is someone who might actually care how I am and to whom I might confide some information that might be personal. That doesn’t happen very often.

The reason why I am writing this now is that two people in the last few days have challenged me on my reply. One was a stranger who even claimed that I don’t give false answers to other people. He clearly doesn’t know me. And the other was someone that I know slightly, and I am sure I have given a similar reply to him before, but he inquired why I reply as I do, so I started to answer him.

In addition to the question being quite personal; it is ill-defined. “How are you?” Contains many assumptions in addition to the existential, and “How are you doing?” is even worse. But the first question that I come back with is “How am I what?” The question assumes that the respondent something or is doing something. So what are you assuming? Then there’s the word “How.” How means in what manner or by what means, and that greatly complicates the matter of whether I am doing anything. The more one looks at this simple looking question the more complicated it becomes. I understand that I am not the only one with this problem. I learned several years ago that Germans don’t usually ask one another how they are, but I just looked for information about this online and didn’t find anything about it, so it might not be a general characteristic, but I had a German roommate for one semester in college, and on the first day there he told me that Germans don’t ask such questions unless they are close friends, and he asked me how he might answer such questions politely but without answering them thoroughly. I told him several of my common replies, including: “Your guess is as good as mine.” “I don’t know either.” And so on.

Every so often someone annoys me while demanding that I tell how I may be feeling, and I explain that I am really just trying to pleasantly avoid saying, “It’s none of your God damned business.” Even fairly dense people manage to understand that, and some people have indicated that they agree with the essence of that reply.

A few months ago among a group that I didn’t want to annoy too much I replied, ”I hate that question, but I recently had an interesting medical problem.” One person agrees that the question was a horrible thing, and I went on to describe an odd virus that I had had.

If you ever have the misfortune of meeting me in person, you might want to refrain from inquiring as to my health and simply say: "Hello!" I try to vary my greetings in accordance with the individual involved. For example, if you are a beautiful woman, then I might bow slightly and say, "It is a very great pleasure to meet you," (or something like that) and I would extend my hand. If you are male, then I would be more likely to simply say, "Hello."

If you have read Not This August by C. M. Kornbluth, then you might remember the people greeting each other saying, "Merry Christmas," even though it was Summer and Fall and passing a one cent coin between them. It was a beautiful touch. If you haven't read the book, then this is encouragement to do so; it is beautiful. And I might think of some interesting greeting as a result.

Maybe we could simply say "Hi" and hand another a one cent coin to remind us of something. Or we could all take up playing "I remember". There are many possibilities, and nearly all are better than "How are you?"