Fixed Greetings

Today was a long day at work. As I walked home I met one of my local friends and we launched into the standard set of greetings. He asked me how I was, how my wife was, and then how work was. Each of these questions has an expected answer, or at least an expected type of answer. You are required to say that the you are doing well, that your wife is doing well, and that work is going well.

The correct response to the question, "How is work?" literally means "I'm on top of it." But tonight when my friend asked about work, I changed one of the vowels in the phrase in order to say "It's on top of me." My friend didn't notice, or else assumed that I had made a simple beginner's mistake, and continued with the greetings. Then he asked again how work was and I replied, "I'm tired." He rebuked me sternly (but with a smile on his face) and listed for me the possible correct responses to his question: "I'm on top of it", "it's going okay", or "I'm working hard."

He then added, as if he had to pull it out of his distant memory, another possible response to the question: "I'm praising God," followed by "It will be good." Okay, I could go with that. So I repeated it back to him. He had me repeat it a couple of times to make sure that I got it right. Then he asked me no less than half a dozen times if I was "at peace." When at last he had been sufficiently assured that I was at peace, he bid me farewell.

The moral of the story: don't deviate from the standard greetings!