Gay Innuendo and Random History Diversions

i have often wondered this, bc it threw me off enormously as a child, bc the rivers I had personal experience with were the Huron river in Michigan and the Soque river here in north Georgia, pictured:

And I was thus utterly baffled by stories where rivers were these massive and incredibly dangerous things that were impossible to ford. I was always like... like, I believe you, but I have no way of envisioning this based on the rivers I have met.

Now as an adult, the largest river I've met personally is the Colorado, which is indeed a different scale than the ones I'm more personally acquainted with, but also I have now seen footage of, for example, the fucking Yellow river:

Pictured above: The River

Pictured below: a long bumpy pond or something, idk

Image ids: top- Columbia River flowing under the Cable Bridge and train bridge between Pasco, WA and Kennewick, WA. Bottom- Yakima River as it flows through a gorge with a gravel bed, tributary creek, and wildflowers in bloom.

Uhm.. Actually, you can be. There's a lot of people who are honest when answering that question. They just do it in ways that don't come across so upsetting or depressing.

Many people sugarcoat their answers to be more palatable for a greeting, or for a start of a conversation. It can also just be a polite way of giving others an out for a potential depressing conversation they may not want to be a part of.

These responses usually come in forms like, - "How are you?/How's it going?" - "Could be better." "It's definitely going." "I'm still alive." "I'm getting there." "New day, new problems." "Well, I'm still here." "Same old." "It's not all sunshine." "It's moving along". "It is what it is." "Not great but I'll survive." "Hoping tomorrow comes quickly." And many more responses like this. These are all ways of basically saying "Things are kinda/very shit at the moment for me". But they just don't go into detail about it. They are being honest, without the extra information.

If the other person doesn't want to go further into this then they may just responed with something like "I feel you", or "That's relatable", or "Yeh, that's life". Which are basically ways of saying "I acknowledge things aren't easy right now", without having to go into a conversation about it. Not everyone has the emotional energy to deal with conversations like that in that moment and that's okay.

Which she opens by saying, essentially, “the Rumpelstiltskin story makes no goddamn sense,” and then she retells it in a couple of different ways to try and make some of the weird details fit.

Evening Dress

c. 1944

by Mainbocher, United States