Well you know recently we've been heavily engrossed in discussing whether the polite ritual of leave-taking is actually polite or not, which makes you wonder why people actually bother to discuss why it's polite since they've already established that it's polite and thus proving the contradictory-ness and hypocrisy (which IS the correct spelling and Nat and Liz gotta eat their laughter) of human beings, which goes on to show that humans really have nothing better to do and are simply wasting time and resources as they breathe oxygen and guzzle junk food while pondering these superficially phsycologically-based questions.
Yeah. Well you know how recently we've been heavily engrossed in discussing whether the ... ritual of leave-taking is actually ... or whatever, yeah. Well I can confirm that whether or not leave-taking is polite, it certainly takes up
a) a lot of time,
b) a lot of courage,
c) should be abolished and yes,
d) can lead to death.
Once upon a time, a girl called... the Darkening Dawn for anonymity's sake, had an extremely tiring, brain-wracking, headache-brewing, goobraining, insidamashing, hullylumpyaslasdflsv of a day, and was happy just to get on to a bus where there was only one emtpy two-seater left, which the Darkening Dawn gratefully sank into. And there was another MG girl, who came along up the aisle and sank down on a seat opposite the Darkening Dawn's comfy two-seater, next to a Member of the Public. Well of course the Darkening Dawn knows that it really isn't very nice sitting next to a Member of the Public, which is why she chose a comfy two-seater in the first place and why the government can sometimes be so Concerned about a singaporean's Attitude. And so anyway, wishing to exhibit the Good-naturedness that an MG Girl is supposed to have, the Darkening Dawn invites the girl over to the other half of the comfy two-seater the Darkening Dawn was blissfully occupying.
It was fatal. The girl apparently thought that yet another ritual, that of Making Conversation, was exquisitely important in this case and made several attempts at it in the Adult Manner. Adult Manner = the way of making conversation for the sake of Making Conversation and involves bringing up extremely unimportant statistical facts about a person, eg. what school you're in (which obviously was quite irrelevant at this point in time, but this is normally what adults do, which you must notice if you have been a victim of Making Conversation enough times), what level you're in, what's your favourite subject, and after a moment's pause, what's your favourite CCA etc, etc, etc.
Well the Darkening Dawn's conversation went something like this:
Girl: Hi... *pause**then, in that awesomely gentle, delicately-coiffed way of contouring your voice in a questioning tone* You're in... Secondary...?
DD: 2.
Girl: *pause*Oh... I see... (there's absolutely nothing to see about it! unless you think that the Darkening Dawn is sec 3 or 4, at which she would be so profoundly insulted you'd find yourself back next to the Member of the Public again.* You were from MGS Primary?
DD: Yeah. You?
Girl: Yea...
DD: *fakely astonished voice* Really? Well that's quite interesting. I haven't seen you around before!
Girl: Actually I came to MG at... Primary Six.
=Break= Well FYI, THAT'S REALLY NOT COUNTED BECAUSE IF YOU ASK WHETHER YOU'RE FROM MG PRIMARY ONE YEAR ISN'T REALLY A VERY GOOD EXCUSE TO PROVE THAT YOU TOO ARE ONE,
ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE TALKING TO ONE WHO HAS COME STRAIGHT FROM PRIMARY ONE!
DD: *maintains politely interested tone* Oh I see! *then turns to face the window in hopes of shaking off this persistent conversation-maker*
Girl: What's... your favourite subject?
DD: *lapses into normal voice, hoping to inspire more sincere talk* Well actually I don't have a favourite subject because Sciences I suck, Humanities got to memorize a whole lot of stuff and so I don't really like any of them.
Girl: Yeah...
*After which conversation falls into a very pregnant silence, with the Darkening Dawn wondering whether or not it was time to say "goodnight, I'm going to sleep" and - the Darkening Dawn thinks - the girl trying to think of a new topic to talk about or, if she had been a little smarter than she appeared, contemplating the wiseness of starting a new topic. Conversation remains like this until bus interchange, where the Darkening Dawn does a coup de grace and asks the Girl's name.*
- End -
YES so you see how it was extremely detrimental to the Darkening Dawn. In her bid to make the girl stop talking, after the first few sentences, not only did she waste a lot of time thinking about the issue, she also wasted a lot of brain power getting (i) insanely frustrated at the stupid ...ty conversation and even more importantly, (ii) enough courage to tell the Girl that excuse me, goodnight! because I'm going to bed now. And of course the girl would just have said, "Oh... okay, *polite laugh* and inside she'd be thinking "what a complete weirdo".
And I did mention that it'd been an extremely tiring day for the Darkening Dawn. The time spent SLEEPING on the bus was of paramount importance in recharging the Darkening Dawn for the next tiring day. Therefore, if she didn't get her SLEEP, and she didn't, goodness knows what she'd do next.
Like bleargh?!