Resting Bitch Face..I may need to try this out.

Much has been written about resting bitch face, the dour look that some women have when their faces are not engaged in some other activity. Like talking. Or eating. Or actually being a bitch.

I suppose men can also have this affliction. And dogs, given the name. But apparently it’s largely women who have it. And the affect was certainly named by a man. Women who have it are often commanded by others to smile. Largely because women who are not smiling make men nervous and awkwardly uncomfortable.

Less is written about resting tell-me-about-your-day-because-you-think-I-care face. I have that face. It’s an affliction marked by people, generally strangers, offering peeks into their lives and insight into their minds that you never sought.

It starts like this, with me approaching the cashier at the grocery store:

Cashier: Hello. How are you?

Me: Fine, thanks. How are you?

Cashier: Well, I’ve already been here for two hours, and they put me in the checkout lane closest to frozen foods, so I’ve been getting slammed all day while the other cashiers are hardly busy at all. I don’t get a break for another hour. I’m overdue for a Pap smear, and I have to get the oozing boil on my back lanced after work.

Me: Sorry. And eww.

I might have made that last part up. But just barely.

I have been told about couples therapy for people just dating (you should move on…like now), details of divorce settlements and an ex-husband’s proclivity for impersonating Al Bundy watching TV on the couch, and lap-band surgeries. (FYI, apparently it’s totally ok to eat nothing but pork rinds following that procedure. Which seems counter intuitive but reflects super successful marketing by the pork rind producers.)

I was once at a BBQ and met neighbors who lived next door, whom I hadn’t previously met. In the first five minutes of our conversation, they went into great detail about all of the difficulties they had had with infertility and the strain it had caused on their marriage. Tragic to be sure. And information that would normally make one offer a conciliatory hug to the people sharing the information. If you actually knew them.

I don’t remember what I said in response. I hope it was caring and comforting and not callous or weird, like offering them one of my own children on a part-time basis.

The very next day a for sale sign went up in their yard. That’s the trouble with resting tell-me-about-your-day-because-you-think-I-care face. It does not invite useful information that may affect your life. Like the fact that the house next door to you is going on the market. (Still not clear whether there was a causal relationship in my response to them and their need to immediately move away. I like to think it was probably just witness protection.)

The more I experience the tales of woe and medical procedures and dating gone wrong that are unwittingly thrust upon me like spritzes of cologne whist walking through Macy’s at Christmas time, the more I realize that everyone did not get the good counsel my grandma gave me.

Gram Sal always said, “no one actually wants to hear how you are when they ask how you are. They are just being polite. The polite answer is always ‘I’m fine, thank you. How are you?’ ”

In Gram’s perfect world, the answer to that returned question is fine, thank you. And you’re out of the conversation in fewer characters than a tweet. She held firm to that. My mother-in-law was the same way. There was a time when she had actually severed a tendon cutting vegetables for dinner, and was still saying she was fine. And she was. In a Dan Aykroyd playing Julia Child on SNL kind of way. (Save the liver!)

As problems go, resting tell-me-about-your-day-because-you-think-I-care face is not the worst. Some times you learn useful things…like how much weight you lose in your standard colonoscopy prep.

I’ve thought about trying out resting bitch face. But the thought of people commanding me to smile (it don’t cost nothing!) before chronicling their successful career path as an Herbalife sales rep is more than I can contemplate.

But, if you want to know how I am, I’m fine. Thank you. How are you?

It’s a trick question. Don’t answer.