Don't Ask Questions

Robert
Treborlang
Australia

Don't Ask Questions
In Rome, in New York, even in turbulent Rio, when you wish to find out something personal from someone you simply attract their attention, look them in the eyes and say:
  "Now, what exactly was your father's mother's maiden name?"

  The Roman will immediately launch into an elaborate family history of the past twenty generations. The Yank will recount all the hardships his paternal grandmother had to endure during her early years on the Missouri. Brazilians will volunteer not only their grandmother's surname but her twelve other names as well, along with the names of all her famous lovers.

  In Sydney, ask the very same thing and you will be considered the rudest person on Earth. Asking questions is the one thing anyone true blue never does. By wanting to know something, you immediately become suspect. You are also labelled a "nuisance" because you are an effort to be with. It will also be considered that you are after personal gain.

  Let's say you are having lunch with some new friends at the factory cafeteria or at the office where you have found employment. Excited and curious, you decide to get things going by making what you believe to be innocuous conversation. (Although around here there does not seem to be such a thing as innocuous conversation.)
  You: What do you folks do on weekends?
  Them: (An embarrassed silence and interchange of looks followed by an outbreak of mysterious unease.)

  You are then likely to experience contorted mumbles due to mouthfuls of food, hurried excuses to leave the table, and glacial greetings for the next six months.

  Without knowing it, you have just made the following thoughtless allegations: One: What gay bars do you frequent? Two: Don't your Alcoholics Anonymous meetings interfere with your weekend social life? Three: Do you happen to own a truck that could help me move my things on Sunday?

  People may want to know things, of course; curiosity is no less a human trait on the Lucky Isle than anywhere else. They may even be dying to find something out - but would certainly not dream of being so foolish as to allow natural instincts to take charge and permit the self-indulgence of actually asking.

  What successfully moulded folks would say, when inquisitive, is: "I understand from Robert that your grandmother was a Langton girl." To which the acquaintance will calmly answer: "No, no, you've got it wrong." Then the first, the one wanting to know will immediately and anxiously pipe in, "Oh, I am sorry. I meant of course to say - a Chisholm."
  "Wrong again", says the acquaintance with a twisted smile.

  Confident that there are not more than two million names on any state's electoral list, resilient people will assume - quite correctly - that as long as they keep on trying, they must eventually get it right.

  Of course, the intelligent alternative is not to ask anything in the first place - which is clearly what everyone has been doing all along.

This phobia about being asked questions remains to this moment a national trait which not even those practising it know about. Mention the topic to anyone and they will look away, as if you have suggested that there are one or two people around who may be actually hiding a mystery or two in their backgrounds.

  To be fair, however, it does not require too much to convince the average person that he or she is rather irritatingly sensitive to questions. They will accept what you say - then simply not talk to you for a long time. Eventually, they are likely to greet you one day with an aggressive:
  "Why did you say that?"

  To this sort of question, of course, a reply is not expected.

  Overseas people ask questions because they want to know the answers. Here you ask questions only when you don't.

Copyright © 1991-2002 - Robert Treborlang

Robert
Treborlang
Australia

Roddy The Rooster & Friends

Site
by
JMV

Search | Home | Contents | Books

A Hop Through Australia's History