stone 5: How Are You?

Yes, I do want to know.

I get that you doubt me. Experience has taught me to skim this question and offer up the expected responses:

“Good, and you?”, “Couldn’t be better!” and the more local one, “Ok la, coping”.

I did once attempt to actually answer the question, and started launching into some detail about what I was going through. The poor person looked at once flummoxed and frustrated.

Historically, this question has been asked for more than three hundred years, its earliest use traced to Anglo-Saxon origin and often related to an inquiry about one’s state of health and had variants including:

How is it with you?

How do you today?

How goes the world with you?

Mockery becomes humans, so we have this record of an exchange between a man and his dog from a 1748 translation of Terrance’s Comedies:

Gnat[ho]. Gnatho greets his dearest dear Friend Parmeno with his best Wishes: how are you?

Par[meno]. On my Legs.

Gnat[ho]. Pshaw, I know that : — — but dost thou see Nothing here that thou dost not like ?

Par[meno]. Yes, you.

Understandably, you and I have both thought and heard it said that this question should be tossed. Really, why bother asking if we aren’t interested.

I disagree.