Have you noticed that the kind greeting “How are you?” has turned into a passing “HeyHowrya!” recently?
I’m not quite sure exactly when it happened, but I can remember the culture shock of moving from a small mid-west farming/industrial community when I was 16 into the big life of the Tampa suburbs. Sure, there were fields, cows, and crap-kicker boots on all the rednecks, but there were enough city kids around to throw me for a loop. The saying back then was, “What’s up?” or simply, “‘sup?”
I’d stop and say something along the lines of one of my classes or a cool movie I just saw, only to look around for the person who asked in the first place. In the words of Ray Stevens: “They was gone!”
Think about this:
How many people do you stop to listen for their answer when you ask how they are?
I’ll up the ante one more on all of us, because I only know two people in all of my hundreds of friends that do this:
Will you take, “Fine” for an answer and leave it at that?
I dare you try to make someone mad for caring that much about how they are doing.
