She's got platitude!

I'm usually a careful sort of bloke. You know, look both sides before crossing, don't volunteer for magician's tricks, give completely dishonest answers even on the most 'anonymous' surveys. So it is part of standard operating procedure to disappear when the arrival of random auntie visitors from the neighbourhood is announced. I've learned from harsh experience that to stay is to suffer for hours in a cosmix flux of recipes, platitudes, medical histories, astrological beliefs and a summary of the distasteful qualities of people not among those present.

Yesterday was a tragic slip-up. I was in the living room with my computer, sucking up the finest twitter wisdom (for example, @cgawker said "ESPN needs to hire more anchors without nostril hair", which has more pure truth in it than most religious texts) when an auntie landed up. By the time I realised something sinister was afoot, the bell had gone and the round had started.

I should actually skip all the pleasantries and cut to the chase because just listing down the pleasantries would run into a dozen blog pages. It goes something like this


"How's your dad?"

"My dad is fine"

"How's your mom?"


"My mom is fine"

"How's your brother?"


"My brother is fine"

And so on, going up to "your second cousin, the one who married the russian girl. How is he?".

I long for the day one of these aunties turns out to be a mathematician and says something like


"How is  a?"  for all a ϵ {R}  where  {R} is the set of all your living relatives.


That would be so cool! (to be continued)