Why am I boring?
First published 6/29/2000

I don’t remember when it first donned on me. Maybe it was while I was talking about mutual funds or lawn care. Maybe it was in the middle of some discussion about recipes or the virtues of Tupperware vs. Saran Wrap. Or maybe there wasn’t a specific moment of revelation; maybe the truth just kind of kind of crept up on me. Either way, I’m now aware of the fact: I’m boring.

I wasn’t always this way. Really, I used to be an interesting guy. I was cool, devil-may-care, counterculture. I used to be able to talk about books, the newest bands… interesting stuff. Now I couldn’t tell you who the newest bands are and, as far as books go, the last thing I had time to read was the instruction manual for the lawnmower I bought a month ago and have been talking about ever since. (Here’s an interesting tip: when mulching, make sure the blade is set to cut off no more than the top third of the grass. Also: clean the underside of the deck after each use to ensure excess clippings don’t collect. It’s true!)

Was there a single moment when I crossed the line from interesting to boring? Or was it a gradual process? Did boring surroundings make me boring, or have I subconsciously constructed a boring environment for myself to match my apparent pro-boring preference? I couldn’t tell you. Worse yet, a discussion of the matter probably wouldn’t be very interesting.

I have a couple theories, though. It could be that I never was interesting -- that the cool devil-may-care guy was just as boring as the pudgy mutual-fund-owning sitting-around-on-a-Friday-night, talking-about-how-those-new-RAID ant-traps-successfully-got-rid-of-that-ant-colony on-the-south-side-of-the-house you-know-the-one-I-told-you-about-last-week guy. It’s possible that I’ve just opened my eyes and learned to embrace my boringness.

Or it could be biological. Coming from a long line of middle-class suburbanites might have made me genetically predisposed to dullness. All this talk about dandelion control and Tupperware might be in my blood. Was I doomed at birth to shop at Costco, and then go on about how if you buy the bulky-but-cheap Costco bottles of shampoo you can use them to fill up the handy-but-expensive normal bottles of shampoo and have the best of both worlds? (Which is true, by the way… my shampoo expenses have never been lower!)

I wish there had been some kind of boring blood test. If I’d known as a young person how boring I was predestined to become I would have done more with my life while I was still interesting. I could have backpacked across Europe. There’s no point now. I’d be the guy in the Tilley hat looking for a McDonald’s because all these other restaurants are so foreign.

My favourite why-am-I-boring theory is that it’s everybody else’s fault. If everybody else wasn’t so boring, this theory goes, it wouldn’t have rubbed off on me.

I like this theory, because it lets me go on talking about whether I should paint or side the house and how index-based mutual funds have a lower MER and that funny thing Sipowicz said on TV last night.

Hey, if you don’t want to hear about it too bad! Maybe you shouldn’t have been so boring!

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