I know a guy who’s friendly and goodhearted. I avoid him whenever possible, slipping away at first opportunity because he utterly bores me.
“He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others,” wrote Samuel Johnson.
But even as dullness becomes epidemic, I remain completely untouched.
Boredom, after all, is relative. I stuck with instructors who droned on about subjects that enthrall only me. Smiling, I also speak over friends’ heartwarming updates. But so have they when I opine. Although, thinking back, quite a number have slipped away recently. That can’t be my fault.
“A healthy male bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience,” John Updike said.
I’m not a blowhard, a Typhoid Tommy of Boredom. A little self-involved maybe, but never dull. I’m not. Anyway, I’m not really at fault. I’ve just misjudged friendships. Yeah, they shoulder the blame, not me.
“We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore,” noted Francois de la Rochefoucauld, the 17th century French moralist.
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