Q. A man I know talks to me with his
eyes almost fully shut and his eyelashes fluttering. He is not the only person who does this — I think people sometimes do it because they are concentrating on what they are saying (although others do it out of pretension). The effect this habit has on me is that I lose concentration on what they are saying and all I can think of is how annoyed I am. How should one sustain a conversation with such people, Mary?
F.W., address withheld A. Bring these people to their senses by clicking your fingers sharply every three seconds. Do this quite close to their eyeballs. The noise will startle them into opening their eyes properly. When challenged, you can reply that you have become a ‘clicker’ — following the example of Naomi Campbell and others — a new method of highlighting the fact that every three seconds someone in the world dies as a result of poverty. Practitioners click their fingers every three seconds to drive home this truth.
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