“You’ve certainly been happy,” the woman said. “I can always count on you to cheer me up. You seem like you haven’t got a care in the world.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. I was in the middle of a conversation with someone who I see a couple of times a week. She’s bright and mature enough — at least 50 years old — to have experienced a lot of life. She’s no dummy. As a restaurant owner, she deals with people constantly — and she knows me pretty well from our frequent conversations.
We had been talking about how it’s easy to tell how unhappy some people are. She chose me as the counter-example to make her point. She said I always seem especially happy.
“What makes you think you know me?!” I wanted to scream.
It was an oddly alienating moment for me Friday night when this happened. Instead of lashing out, I just asked why she thought what she did. Then I briefly told her I’m actually quite miserable lately.
She thought I was kidding, so I dropped it.
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