Last night I sat outside Laser Wolf drinking my Wynwood IPA and eavesdropping on the three young women sitting at the table next to me. One was Hispanic, one was Asian-American, and one was Midwestern. At one point the Midwesterner complained about how uninteresting she was, being, as she explained, white and from the Midwest. This struck me as odd; in my travels I have met my share of bores in Latin America and Asia, and a number of interesting people in the Midwest. I have never considered skin color, or geographical provenance, to be an indicator of personal fascination. But as the Midwesterner continued to talk, which she did 80 percent of the time, it became clear that her assessment of herself was accurate. It was also obvious that she didn’t believe a word of it. For if she truly regarded herself as uninteresting, she would not have monopolized the conversation. Why bore people with your self-evident dullness? She would have eagerly listened and learned from the people she had declared (disingenuously) to be more compelling.
