Stories
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