Dimwitted Smile

“It’s fine,” you say right after I have explained why the complication in question is not fine. True, it is not life or death but it is a subject of some concern and things do not automatically become “fine” just because we wave a magic wand and declare them so.

I am speaking to a straw man here. I have nobody and nothing specific in mind here. It’s just like metaphorically, when I have carefully organized all my plans into neat piles of paper and in walks the living tornado, sifting through the piles and getting everything out of order and acting incredulous when I indicate that you’re inconveniencing me.

“Whatever,” you tell me — that magic “Whatever” that gets you off the hook and dismisses something that may be important to somebody else. Somebody who’s not you. Of course, it’s easy to tell me a breezy “Whatever” when you don’t have to deal with the fallout. You can just walk away from other people’s problems and skip through the fields of wildflowers that exist mainly in your mind. Throw in a dismissive hand gesture with that “Whatever” and we’re all set.

Come to think of it, you screw up a lot of things, don’t you? You screw up and laugh it all off and say, “Oh, I don’t let things like that get to me.” There’s a fine line between insouciance and irresponsibility. Maybe once in awhile if you’d let something get to you just a little bit and stop singing that chorus of “la dee da,” you wouldn’t be such a screw up and you’d become the kind of person that people could count on. 

Oh, am I being harsh? Whatever! It’s fine! You just keep on smiling that dimwitted smile and listen to the calliope music in your head.