The Questionable Question

On Friday night we hurried to an opening, one we could not miss even though we were very busy, we had to show up.

The event was nice and while wandering the crowd I ran across a guy I knew from the Chamber of Commerce. Although I couldn’t remember his name, we were old friends and stood around a while just talking.

He asked about my health with quite specific information about my knee problem which I don’t really remember but knew it was a problem way back when. He remembered that and I went on to talk about my upper arm and shoulder problem which I’ve written about recently in relation to dumb falls I’ve made. So, enough of the small talk, and he startled me with the question, “How’s your sex life?”

OK, I’m a big boy. I’ve been asked that before, like when I was 17! It is not in good taste, unless he knew something (or thought he did) about something I was supposed to do, to ask such a question. I was dumbfounded. How do I respond?

I quickly thought about lots of funny answers but reconsidered because I wasn’t sure what he was getting to He’s an old guy (like myself) and maybe he was having erectile dysfunction problems and was asking me in a disguised way if I had them, or maybe this was just a normal question for him. I didn’t know what to say and I gave the lame answer, “Fine!” for want of a better answer. I was going to give him references, but decided that was not the way to treat this. Or, I could have said, “Why, did your wife complain to you?”

He went on to tell me some jokes, which may have related to this query, or not. I really don’t know.

I am seldom thrown off base by a question, and if I were a teenager, I could have handled it. It was just rude.