YEAH IT'S FRIDAY

I'm always amazed at how often people answer a question with an answer to a different question. Sometimes, even two. Consider this:

"Hey, how you doing?"
"Yeah, it's Friday."

I think I'm supposed to understand implicitly what this means. But the more I think about it, the less I get it.

It's an abbreviation of a much longer conversation isn't it? Somewhere, hidden in the middle of this two-line exchange is the required assumption that the other person is saying they're tired, looking forward to the weekend, fed up with being here, ready to go home, and yet not quite ready to state any of the above explicitly.

And somehow, the exact same thing happens on Mondays.

"Hey how you doing?"
"Oh it's definitely Monday."

Confused look... it can't mean the same set of assumptions can it? On a Monday? I'm tired, looking forward to the weekend, fed up with being here, ready to go home?

Okay, maybe it can.

It's still answering the wrong question though. And anyway, if I ask you a question, it shouldn't be up to me to do all the work to figure out the answer (I mean the real answer) should it? Surely, the onus is on the answerer!

Here's another exchange to which answering the wrong question could easily have got me into a lot of bother. Some bright spark thinks we ought to do So-and-So's-Got-Talent at Christmas.

"Matt! You'll dress up as Elton John, won't you?"

"No."