TEENAGERS ONLY RECOGNISE two possible states of being: you can either be cool or you can be boring. Being boring is never cool, and being cool is never boring. You just have to be very aware that what is cool one day is boring the next. Unless you are a parent, of course, and then you are permanently boring. Cool parents are particularly boring.
Adult bores are divided into those who know they’re boring and those who don’t. At a party, you might accidentally sit down next to someone, and they’ll announce cheerily, “You’ve come to be bored rigid by me, haven’t you!” For some bizarre reason, it’s impossible to leave after that. Instead, you feel a huge need to prove that no one can be that boring. Eventually, you realise that someone can indeed be that boring and you’ve been sitting next to them for three hours. When you finally manage to drag yourself away, they’ll say cheerily, “I told you I was boring.”
Other bores think they’re very interesting because they’re very interested in something. Unless they’re in a club specifically devoted to Fans of the Stamps of the Falkland Islands, what interests them will be coma-inducing to others. With these people, it’s imperative to avoid them getting started on their subject. This is harder than it sounds because they are always thinking about it and will seize any opportunity to bring it up: i.e. “Did you know your head is the same shape as the West Falkland Island?”
There is another class of boring person who talks non-stop about nothing. In an odd way, they are fascinating because they are a living record of the unnoticed minutiae of life. For example, they will tell you in great detail that they went to the shops, but they’ll do it with all the passion and excitement of the mechanical voice in a lift. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if that voice in the lift wasn’t in fact a very boring individual sitting behind a panel describing endlessly what floor you’re on and actually thinking he was being very entertaining with it.
Boring people are actually surprisingly dangerous. For example, the standard monotone drone is hardly noticeable for a few seconds but can, after an hour or two’s continuous exposure, drill easily through the thickest part of your skull and destroy the entire contents.
One of the most chilling things in life is the realisation that you are a bore. It’s like catching yourself admiring beige zip-up cardigans. Perhaps it’s reassuring to know that being boring, like wearing beige zip-up cardigans, is absolutely fine as long as you stay at home and don’t go out and inflict it on other people.
© GUY BROWNING IS THE AUTHOR OF ‘NEVER PUSH WHEN IT SAYS PULL’ AND CREATOR OF ‘TORTOISE IN LOVE’ (DVD) – USED BY PERMISSION.
