What I’m going to talk about is something no one has ever discussed before: the Blank Stare. We all do it, we get better at it with age, some are natural & some have to work hard to achieve the nonchalance needed to pull it off. It’s that stare you do when you’re standing in line at the checkout & you’d love nothing better than to stick your face into everyone’s shopping cart to see what they bought/direct them to better brands/discuss dinner menus and/ or recipes.
You do that same stare when you walk into a beauty salon (at least us girls do) & you’d love to go talk to everyone & see how their hair/nails/eyebrows are coming along & tell an appropriate anecdote. We do it at the doctor’s office when we run out in a rush & forget about getting reading material & those magazines on the table are three years old and look part chewed up, and there’s someone there trying to catch our eye to initiate conversation & you’re thinking, ‘I’m not here for that doctor, I’m here for the other doctor, stay back!
Why do we do it? Have we become such snobs that we really don’t care what the others are doing? I refuse to believe that, I think the people to whom the ‘Blank Stare’ comes naturally are partially brain dead. Granted there are some times when that’s not the reason at all, it’s pure embarrassment. Like when your driver is wheeling your shopping cart to the car & you’re having a conversation (in your head) with everyone around you that goes something like ‘He doesn’t need to do it ... I ... he just took it & took off ... I really don’t mind pushing it ... it would be rude to stop him, he just wants to do his job ...). Or is it just because I’ve never had a driver before?
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I really would like to see what everyone’s doing & offer appropriate anecdotes/advice/recipes! Maybe I observe people too much. Maybe my brain is stuck at age ten & this detachment is weird for me. Who knows?! But I’ll bet each & every one of you will think about the ‘Blank Stare’ next time you’re at the checkout at the pharmacy & the guy in front of you is buying what you suspect is something he shouldn’t be buying, but you just can’t see clearly what it is, & wouldn’t you love to find out!