So I’m sitting on our fav patio having my usual grande non-fat, no foam latte, (the specifics of which you should know in case you ever want to “treat”) pretty much minding my own business, when the woman sitting at the next table strikes up a conversation. It wasn’t one of those really interesting conversations that people sometimes have over a cuppa. To be honest, I can’t really remember what triggered the chit chat but I’m pretty sure it was along the lines of “Wonderful day! Nice that the weather has finally warmed up. Afterall, it is July.” a commonly expressed sentiment in my part of the world. Or perhaps she commented on someone walking by dressed, to be polite, unusually, confident that my opinion would mesh with hers. And although our encounter was short it was clear that in some way, if only in her mind, she and I had grown close, by whatever metric one can measure closeness between two, until that moment, strangers.
I know this must be the case because a short while later, and after we had both comfortably returned our attentions back to our regular coffee partners, she got up and walked toward the door of the cafe, stopping just long enough to look me straight in the eye and proclaim, in the most matter of fact way that “coffee goes right through me.” Just like that. She stopped to tell me she had to go to the bathroom and pretty much what she was going to do there. This person who I had, in the broadest sense of the word “known” for just short of ten minutes, shared with me what I would consider to be one of the most private of bodily functions. Now I know that some people would shrug this sort of thing off with the oft, perhaps even overused saying we have come to know as TMI (too much information) but not I. For me, this open and rather uninhibited disclosure was simply a thing I did not need to know (TIDNTK) at all. Because I don’t. I don’t need to know anything about anyone else’s bodily functions. I mean it’s enough that I have to deal with my own which, if you don’t mind my saying, can be problematic in of themselves.
As I reflected on this encounter I realized that there are other TIDNTK. Like secrets. Now I love a good secret as much as the next person but here’s the problem. As you may recall (and if you don’t, as always you can read about it here) I don’t have the very best memory. So when you tell me a secret one of two things is going to happen. There’s a very distinct possibility that I’m going to forget what you told me which is probably the least of two evils, but nonetheless makes the whole exercise rather pointless. The more problematic outcome is that I’m going to remember what you told me but forget that “don’t tell anyone but…” part of the conversation, rendering the aforementioned “secret” less so. Which is never a good thing.
Finally, and this is by no means a comprehensive list, I never need to know how much you paid for anything. Now this may surprise some of you who know a little bit about my background since, my Mother at the ripe old age of almost 99 (maybe that’s something you didn’t need to know) can, at a moments notice, rhyme off the price she paid for each of the 6 steaks she served for dinner on July 8, 1963. So if I did want to know prices I would have come by it honestly. But the thing is I don’t. You see, if I bought the same item and paid more for it than you did, I’m just going to feel bad. And if you paid more for it than I did, well what good is that going to do you? If we paid the same then I suppose I knew all along what you paid, so what did I gain by your telling me? And then there is always the chance that you tell me how much you paid for something just to let me know that you could. Silly, because that will likely result in my being judgmental and thinking about how stupid you were to pay so much and not wait for whatever it was to go on sale. Because everything always does. And that’s what I would do if only to avoid the aforementioned “feeling bad” thing. So, as you can see none of this is good, ergo best not to know in the first place.
I’m sure there are many more TIDNTK but they’ll have to wait ‘cause I gotta run. Must have been something I ate.
More than anything, I want this blog to go viral. Ok, not more than 
If there’s one thing I have learned over the more than two years that I have been writing this blog it’s that, while I am overall a pretty shallow gal, the one thing I am not shallow about is this blog. Funny, isn’t it? Perhaps even a little ironic, although I have a reliable source who informs me the word is used incorrectly about 95% of the time so you can decide if this is one of those. But funny or ironic, it’s not surprising really. You see for me, being shallow is not some sort of hobby or passing fancy. It’s a way of life. The lens through which I view the world. It’s the core of my very being. So what happens on this blog is important to me. And don’t get me wrong, things happen. At the beginning, you may recall that I expressed some concern about the possibility that writing about being shallow might result in my becoming less shallow. Fortunately, it hasn’t. In fact, while my goal has always been to help others better understand the life of a shallow person, I have come to the realization that, as an unexpected corollary, I too have come to a better understanding of such a life. Just by writing about it.
As the writer of possibly one of the few blogs on the internet that openly celebrates the rather maligned state of “being shallow” I have always felt it important to share with those who are interested, how to traverse this one little life of ours on the shallow side of the road. No doubt, those of you who have been with me from the beginning, can recall the helpful life lessons presented in posts like 
The other day I found myself thinking about stuff in general. It’s something I do on occasion, sometimes without even realizing it. Not sure why. I’ll be sitting watching the latest episode of whatever reality show happens to be on the tube (yes I still call it that) and it just happens. Thoughts come tumbling into my head whether I want them to or not. And they are not thoughts about the show. They’re other kinds of thoughts. Sometimes random. Other times quite focused. Like when I think about cleaning up the house for my garage sale this June. I think a lot about that. But so far that’s about all I’ve done because honestly, the idea of getting rid of all of the things I should get rid of is a bit overwhelming. Though I take some solace in knowing that my junk will become someone else’s treasure for whatever reason that may be.
Shallow Be My Name 