QUOTE : POSTTRAUMATIC SMALL-TALK DISORDER When people ask me what I do, I say, “Whatever comes to mind, as if you care. I think I’ll talk to someone else. So long.” A person ought to try to get along, which I would do, if I knew something else besides the same old crap to say: “I’m glad you ask. I care about feigned interest in my work. Mind reading is my job. Your mind, for instance, is a long reel of profanities for which I care as only sailors do: I want to say just those profanities myself. How else can anyone stay sane? How else, I mean, if we can’t call to mind endearments, or, say, obsequies. I long to hear your obsequies, while you do that slow limbo in your box. Take care.” I may not care for small talk, but what else can anybody do, when dimwits who don’t mind how long the other dimwits take to say their dim, interminable say, insist one should care. Fine, I care: they take too long! Let’s end all this! And something else: death takes too long. Death I mind enormously. I do. But what do you say, briefly? Have I lost my mind? Do you care? Nobody else to anyone matters long.