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HOW TO BE BORING. Hilaire Belloc is an amusing essayist. One of his entertaining ones is A GUIDE TO BORING. He approaches this subject as a means to inflict boredom upon your adversaries, not cure it. In this case, boring people is considered an art to be purposely practised. I once experienced a terrible untaught bore on one occasion, from whom there was no escape other than by jumping off a speeding bus. She talked incessantly in a raucous voice, which even pierced the roar of the motor, as well as my ears. In case you would like to practise, here are some tests or signs that boredom has been achieved! If you have lost the attention of the person held in conversation, it will be apparent when they lose eye contact in order to notice a passing car, or a piece of paper blown in the wind. Another proof of boredom occurs when the other person manages to abruptly change the subject. The full weight of boredom has been achieved when the other person casually switches over to speak to someone else. To be sure that boring someone will occur, use a voice without inflection or within a tedious range. This may even induce sleep. Of course a sure method would be to initiate a subject or relate an incident, but hold up the telling of it by stopping to decide on what date this happened. Going back and forth between dates or names of people, or worse still, forgetting the ending, will be absolutely maddening to the listener. The victim may get a wild look in their eye, and try to escape. So there you have it - how to bore almost anybody. And now I've just bored myself by writing about this. by Norma C Plummer |
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