Trap Question

"How are you?" or "How have you been?" and your trapped. Be honest for a second, out of the many times you have probably asked the aforementioned questions, how many times did you want an honest answer as the reply. We all want to hear that the person we asked the question to is or has been doing great, but do we ever really want to hear that they have been shitty and miserable? NO! For starters, it's just make you feel like an ass for asking and depress you even worse if you're already doing pretty awful yourself. And less selfishly, you make them feel worse or let them unleash a load onto you. No one wants to hear that the acquaintance they barely know is doing horrible because they just found out they had the clamp.

Then their is always the chance you are the one on the other side of the fence. You've been asked the dread question and haven't been particularly good. Then you have to judge so many details in little time. For instance, how much time can you chat with this person, how well are they known, are they trustworthy, do they really want you to deluge a lot of details to them and do you really care to? If you are doing well, do you gloat or brush it off to them.

Either way, any time I hear the question it's usually in the following context.

Person 1: How are you?!
Person 2: Eh, pretty good.
1: Oh that's good. see ya later.
2. Ya, bye!

with neither of the two parties seeing each other for month until the confront one another again in this awkward social limbo.

-Randy