Mankind’s Dumbest Questions: “Are you OK?”
April 25th, 2007 by Brian
A question to which you already know the answer is a pretty goddamned dumb question. It feels like 90% of the instances of this question occur in situations such as the one pictured above. In situations when a person’s OK-ness is uncertain, it’s still a dumb question because an affirmative reply provides no helpful information. A negative reply is useless because the person may be unaware of or unwilling to admit to their injuries or maladies.
Wife: “You haven’t touched your bacon sandwich. Are you OK?”
Husband: “I’m fine.”
Wife: “Well I noticed that you came home from the bar last night with an ice pick sticking out of your thigh”
Husband: “I’M FINE. CAN WE JUST EAT BREAKFAST?”
Husband: *collapses*
This question is also frequently applied to psychological health. Any man who has ever asked his wife or girlfriend “are you OK?” can testify to its uselessness.
Husband: “You’re being awfully quiet. Are you OK?”
Wife: “Fine”
*3 hours later*
Wife: “You promised me you would never wear a fucking flowered shirt ever again. You KNOW how sensitive I am about my colorblindness!” *cries*
Proposed alternatives to “Are you OK?” are as follows:
“Do you have health insurance?” (for physical ailments, since the answer to that is what really determines how “OK” someone is.)
“What’s up your ass?” (For psychological state. Always assume that the person you are talking to has one thing or another to whine about.)
It is also because people psychologically doesn’t want to give “negative” answers on a question. We always want to be nice or polite. Also, another thing is, we do not want people to worry about us even we really want to and that is why we answer “yes im ok” or just “ok” when we are asked… “ARE YOU OK?”
btw… added you to my technorati fave
“Are you okay?” is a lot like greeting a stranger with: “Hi, how are you today?”
“Are you okay?” is more like saying “I know you well enough to recognize something is askew and wanted you to know this” and “Hi, how are you today?” is just an nice empty way of recognizing someones presence… we don’t really want to know about their ingrown toenails, bad job review, recent fight with the spouse, out-of-control kid, or intestinal irregularities - nor do we want to know why there is an ice pick protruding from their eye ball - not really… ewwww
This is kind of a corollary:
Douglas Adams observed in one of the Hitchhikers books that a lot of human conversation is composed of glaringly obvious statements. I think the examples he gave were “Boy, it sure is raining” and “You seem to have fallen down a 50-foot well.”
I told my mom about this a couple of years ago. She recently told me she’s bitter that I did so because she says she never noticed it before but does constantly now.