“If they don’t want to know. Why do they ask?” I hear people say then, and generally a tiny flare of irritation soon fades and they say, “But sometimes I also say, ‘How are you?”and I don’t mean it.”
I’ve been interpreting what they’re TRYING to say in spite of the words they use and here are some possibilities;
1. to those we know rather than, “How are you?” We can say, “What a delight to know you’re still alive and kicking”
2. To those we don’t know, “I’m glad to be alive and very glad to live in a free land where almost all the people are functioning properly, like you and I, rather than walking around befuddled waiting to be carried away to Babylon as a slave.”
3. “My life is just a little bit better with you in it. Thank you very much!” or
4. “You may be useful to me sometime, so lets establish the warm fuzzys in case you are.”
5. “Are you an enemy? I can’t tell. Oh, I have an idea, I’ll ask you a stupid question and if you don’t glare and scowl or hit I’ll mark you down as somewhat friendly.
6. “I love you as a brother, but I’m not going to say it in public.”
7. “I think you’re just wonderful!”
Of course, if you presented somebody with any one of these, they’d still come home to their helpful wife and say, “What was I suppose to say to THAT!”
Most of us aren’t trained in honest greeting techniques so I suggest you make a copy of the above list, keep it on your person at all times,. You can pull it out when ever you see someone coming your way and rather than letting him pass you by, hold him still (not physically if he’s unknown) and read through this list quickly, and pop out the appropriate but honest greeting.
I’m sure many of you kind readers will want to add to the list, so I’ll collect, list and publish them here for the betterment of society.    nancymauerman.com

John just woke up moaning, having had a second in-grown toenail pulled yesterday. He got somewhat dressed, limped out into the living room and said, “I’m philosophizing on my woes or my toes. I’m not sure.”    nancymauerman.com

“You can’t make a purse out of a sow’s ear” is the thought that had John going the other day so. Right in the middle of a conversation we’d been having on politics he fit in, “If you took the sow’s ear, cut side up, and split it open, with an ear shape on both sides, you could safety pin a handle to the thing, and there you are. A purse!” then he continued with his political statement. He did this over and over all day, verbally modifying ears into a plethora of purses, usually as an attachment to completely foreign subjects.
He doesn’t just think about women’s accessories, he follows through occasionally. An example of which is the Mother’s Day gift I received a few years ago. Because the beholding eyes were mine, the resulting purse was unique and beautiful in spite of it being made of a short piece of webbing , two large safety pins and a GARDENING GLOVE!    nancymauerman.com

John can’t see our cat, Formica, in the dark. She’s a very forgiving animal but at the moment of impact she speaks in a tone of incredulity as if saying,”Hey Man, I can see you; why can’t you see me?” To which John always says something along this line, “Hey Cat. I don’t have cat’s eyes you know!”
John told me the other night, “She calls me names! She calls me a lot of cat names when I step on her in the dark.”
I wrote and illustrated a four part story about the ancient creature, Leafman. In the first two books called, “Beefman Who’s Beefman?” (and the second) “A Plethora of Monsters“, Anna and her Grandmother are each talking about their separate worlds, like John and Formica’s on going evening conversations. Anna’s dragon, Iva Lou, shows up with a third view of life and the three realities over lap and soon merge into tragedy. See Amazon for “Leafman Attacks The Complete Quadrilogy“.     nancymauerman.com

I have many friends with unique grandmothers and I have many friends who ARE peculiar and engaging grand, great grand, and great great grandmothers who are gently involved in the lives of their families.
As John grew up he spent time with his grandmother who lived, isolated, on a Utah reservation. Every day she wore two different colored socks because the others on the reservation had a respect and left alone odd people.
She paid a flat fee for electricity, so as a result, all day, every day, and every night, she left every single light burning. Her tiny house was lit and radiating light like a UFO. John had a hard time sleeping the nights he spent with her.
This may explain John’s fascination with flash lights, his need to turn all the lights in the house if a cloud passes in front of the sun, and his need to plug up most every electrical outlet with night lights, that burn day and night. In all probability it’s not the explanation, but I’m trying to understand my world and be kind.
When we saved up and finally decided to improve our house, yes you guessed it, he had more outlets added and gleefully dove into his secret stash for a bunch of night lights. He gleeful moved through the house filling all empty sockets as if he lived on a giant Christmas tree.
I’m fascinated with families and Grandmothers. They’re a dominate part of most of the children’s books I write and illustrate. Find my books at Amazon they as funny as John.      nancymauerman.com

John sleeps on a narrow bed in his treasure room since his leukemia diagnosis. Two walls are book shelves, floor to ceiling, crammed full of books. The other two walls are fitted with racks of tubs holding terribly intriguing guy stuff. These rarities don’t reach all the way up so he’s hung strange paintings by me or his mother, their frames touching the ceiling.
There’s only an stringent space left for his bed where and a couple of days ago he woke UP UPSIDE DOWN IN HIS BED. His feet were where his head should have been.
This peculiar sleeping activity may be the causation or the inspiration for his awake activities. He unshops occasionally and in two ways.
Sometimes he brings an item from home, like an old tool we bought because we couldn’t imagine what it was. We’d proudly showed it to everybody who came to our home until someone finally explains its function bringing it down from bizarre to banal in treasure status. As I was saying, he brings this object to a local store with a price tag he’s carefully tie onto it. I can remember a ten inch metal tool he labeled as $204.35. He snuggles it onto a shelf between other items and somewhat quickly leaves.
I’m some what up tight so I worried. “For what?” he said, “For unshoplifting?”
He’s also been known to sneak a box of cookies or a package of pig’s testicles into someone’s shopping cart when they aren’t looking, burying it under other items so it won’t be seen until check out. Then we shop our way quickly out of the vicinity and enjoy speculating at the forth coming scenario .
I’ve worked these and other odd activities into a children’s book called, “Gracie’s Grandfather Makes Trouble” found at Amazon.    nancymauerman.com