The older I get, the more I start to see mysterious workings of the world. Strike that, let's narrow it to people. I notice weird quirks that people have. I'm not talking just one person, but everyone.

By nature, we humans have this weird quality called "curiosity." For some bizarre reason unbeknownst to us, there's all sorts of stuff that piques our curiosity. Think about it. You see someone reading a magazine with a celebrity on the cover, and immediately you speculate as to what she's reading about. You see a guy who looks homeless at a bowling alley who's carrying on a conversation with thin air, and you wonder what on earth is going through the guy's head.

By now, perhaps you realize what I'm talking about. But at the same time, you're probably also wondering what inspired this most interesting and obviously factual idea. I'll tell you.

It started with a certain event to which I will be attending to in the near future. I'm talking to a friend, and she asks about something during that time. I say simply, "Oh, that's not going to work. I have something going on."

Notice I kept my answer good and vague. I did this for a reason: I did not want to share what was going on, only that I was busy. But, as I have already pointed out, curiosity always gets the best of us. My friend immediately asked,

"What will you be doing?"

And awkward silence ensues. Telling the person that I'm not comfortable talking about something would be considered offensive (given the "friend" status), continuing to be vague would be seen as dodging the question and also taken as offensive, but just saying what I had to do would be betraying whatever reason I had for not saying so in the first place.

In the interest of maintaining friendship and balance, maybe I should just take Adrian's cue and say "I like ice cream." That'll definitely take the conversation in a new and interesting direction, and hopefully I'll even be rescued from answering the other query. Decisions, decisions.