'lright?

Every work day starts off awkwardly. Every day I isolate myself just a little bit more. Look a little bit more bitchy, a little bit stiffer. Because every time someone greets me I get flustered. I hesitate and, inevitably, witness my chance for a jovial and productive work relationship sputter out like a firecracker that shoots higher and higher and just farts, drawing a thin grey line of shame behind its hollow, falling mass.

For what, my dear (largely non-English) friends, is the appropriate response to ‘Lright? It’s both greeting and question. And response. And I just can’t deal with it.

I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried ‘Fine thanks, how are you’ (too formal), ‘Not bad, not bad’ (too negative), ‘Hello’ (appropriate but somehow incomplete) and ‘Yes’ (the wrongest of them all).

The only thing I haven’t tried is, in fact, ‘Alright’. Which it seems is the only acceptable response.

Sorry. I can no longer continue this entry because I just now said- and this is a direct quote – “G’day, g’day” to a fellow editor as I passed him in the hall. That’s it. I mock no one.

Oh my god.