This is the question I dread the most.

It is also the query that is made of me in the initial stages of just about every acquaintanceship. And whenever it is asked, invariably said ship is sunk.

"What do you 'DO'?" always seems to revolve around the restrictive Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five world of the humdrum. In my experience, any answer which falls outside this parameter always leads to the same follow-up - "Yes, but what do you 'DO'?"

As if our lives are supposed to be defined simply by whatever form of wage slavery happens to have us ensnared at that point in time. And God(dess) forbid that you are not currently a slave to someone's wages - under these circumstances you are not considered as even having a life, and are thus unworthy of further attention or interest.

Stone the crows.

Sometimes the consequences can be even uglier. I remember at a weekend festival one time several years back where a woman approached me while I was enjoying a quiet meal. After chatting for a couple of minutes the inevitable occurred - "What do you 'DO'?"

Silence from me.

Once more, a little more impatiently: "What do you 'DO'?"

I told her.

The rest of that weekend she was looking at me as though I were something that had gotten stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

Never mind that it was she who first approached me, or was she who had made this nagging, intrusive query more than once when I was just trying to mind my own business. All of a sudden I was the bad guy.

Isn't it amazing how an unsatisfactory answer to a dumb, meddling question can earn you roughly the same status as a wad of used chewing-gum, or something recently ejected from the south end of a stray cat?

Or how do you tell nosy individuals that such questions are inappropriate on first acquaintance; that if they decide instead to be patient and stick around things will be revealed in time as my comfort level allows for it?

The friendships I treasure most are those where the other person did not ask meddling questions out of the gate but merely allowed things to develop naturally over time.

I just wish the 'DO'-birds would learn to understand this.