Can I Tell You?

There are so many pointless things people say everyday. And I mean really pointless sentences. Sentences with either really obvious answers or questions with no real point at all.

I mean, I’ve been injured quite number of times and when you’re lying on the floor with blood pouring out of your nose and your head spinning, the last thing anyone needs to ask you is “Are you ok?”

I mean, seriously, those few moments and breaths of air could have been used to call a doctor or an ambulance.

I walked into Chaplaincy earlier this week soaking wet. You can most probably imagine my sarcasm to the question “It’s raining?”

Or asking someone blue in the face and shivering if it’s cold.

Obviously, knowing the person well, makes a lot of usually normal questions pointless too. For example: asking me “Would you like a cup of tea?” would be wasting your time as you know I’m going to say yes. Asking Krissie “would you like this muffin?” or asking Mike “Mc Donalds or the Salad bowl?” is just as pointless.

Only you and someone else in a room and you smell a fart, “Did you fart?” Isn’t it obvious, if it wasn’t you, then don’t embarrass the man, or woman (because yes indeed, women do fart) and pretend nothing happened.

You touch something hot, and move your hand away with a verbal expression of pain, and they ask “Is it hot?” What do you think it is?

There are so many other situations like these.

But the phrases that really irritate me, the phrases that are more useless than a blind goalkeeper, are the ones, usually said by girls between the age of 12 and 20. The infamous “Can I tell you?” or it’s alternative “Can I ask you something?”

First of all, by asking me “Can I ask you a question?” you have already, as it where asked me a question. And have you ever met any one who ever waited for an answer to it.

In today’s fast day and age, where we don’t have time to write text messages properly, and they are reduced to a few letters and numbers put together to form sentences, why do we keep insisting on wasting time on these pointless questions? Who has the time to insert extra words, let alone whole sentences.

I’ve had phone conversations of 30 seconds in which the only words I said was “Where?”….”ok”. No hello, no good-bye, there was no need. I’m going to see the person in a few minutes or hours at maximum, all ‘vital’ gossip can be shared there.

The strange thing is, that the people who usually say this chocolate kettle of a phrase, are usually people who have a real lot to say and speak really, really fast. So why? Why? Do they take the time and slow down enough to insert this pointless questions? Save time, save breath. Terry Pratchett, in one of his books says that the human body only has so much air it can process before it dies, and these girls are wasting it on saying the same question fifty times a day.

But, I guess it’s their choice.

We all have stupid habits, like mine is writing these pointless thoughts, and yours is reading them.

See, I know that if you’ve read this far, you want to listen. So without needing to ask, I know:

I can tell you.