Ramona missed a few days at work last week. She was gone Wednesday, and again Thursday, but when she came in on Friday I only said good morning.
In the afternoon I said I was glad she was back, but I never asked where she'd been, and you know why? It is none of my frickin' business.
Is that bizarre or hard to understand? So many people never understand it. At All. Which is another reason I don't get along well with 'people'.
My mom is always asking what I had for dinner last night, and when am I going to get my teeth fixed. My nephew George keeps asking where I was for all the years I was "missing," and he insists on details. My flatmate Dean has lately been asking about my late wife, because only one I mentioned her in a passing conversation with my other flatmate Robert, which Dean overheard. At work, Kimmy has great interest in my weekends, but I have no interest in hers.
I don't ask or answer personal questions unless we're friends, and if you ask too many personal questions, we're not friends.
Respect for privacy is a baseline for me, a rule rarely broken. It's what I demand, and what I give others. Even here on a website where I blabber about my life seven days every week, I choose what to blabber about — which is not everything. A whole heck of a lot goes unsaid, believe it or not.
To the intrusive questions above, my answer is "Fuck off," or more often a polite variation thereof.
Mom,
if I had a story to tell about last night's dinner I'd tell it, but I
don't so there's nothing to tell. And my teeth don't need to be fixed;
they work fine. And George, where I was for all those years was away,
by choice, but the details are for me to know and cherish or regret. And Dean,
my dead wife is nobody's business but mine and maybe her family's. And
Kimmy, there is nothing to be said about my weekends and nothing to be
asked about yours, because privacy is a real thing and it matters to me.
And that's why I never asked Ramona where she was on Wednesday and Thursday.
5/7/2023
"So, Ramona, where have you been for the past few days?"
ReplyDelete"Oh, I had a miscarriage. Thanks for asking."
Ha — that would've been funny, yup, but even if she'd only been sick in bed dripping snot and enduring diarrhea, she shouldn't have to be cross-examined about it.
ReplyDelete