Being Boring

Whenever the missus addresses me with the line: I hope you won't mind me saying this but… I brace myself knowing that I'm about to learn something new, something true and something unpleasantly embarrassing about myself. This is the value of being close to someone who knows you inside out and isn't afraid to tell you about stuff you'd rather not acknowledge but which is worth consciously being aware of - and trying to do something about.

So imagine my surprise when just last week she told me I was boring without the usual preamble to soften the blow. It was as if she thought I already knew this, so there would be no element of 'news' regarding the information. Funnily enough I was quite astonished at what, at first, seemed an absurd notion. It took her less than a minute to illustrate the obvious. As she pointed out someone whose greatest pleasures consist of lying on the floor and reading odd books or listening to odd music is, in broad terms, a model of a supremely boring individual. For some reason this had honestly never occurred to me before, but seeing the light, it struck me as very funny as well as very true.

It was at that point that I realised that I rarely, if ever, feel bored myself. The irony of this made me laugh out loud, at which point the missus gave me one of her see what I mean, beyond redemption glances, leaving me thoroughly cheerful for the rest of the day