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"4. When I am in the midst of a story that is clearly going nowhere. I have this terrible habit, as I imagine many people do, of thinking that my stories are really, really interesting when they are actually unbelievably boring. Minor things will happen to me and because, at the time, they made me laugh or feel uncomfortable for a moment or so, I will be overwhelmed with the need to run and tell everyone about the guy at the post office who was, like, sooooo rude bro you have no idea. However, the real problem lies in the fact that I am never able to identify my stories as incredibly lame until I am far past the point of no return. I’ll be at the three-quarter mark of my story when I look around and see the bored faces humoring me as they wait, in vain, for me to get to the point already. And it is at this point that I have one of two choices, choices which I’ve found work equally poorly: I can abandon ship and actually just say, “This is way more boring than I thought it would be… you know what? Never mind this story.” And maybe offer to buy them a beer to make up for wasting their time. The second option, which I’ve taken far more often (I hate to say) is to attempt to embellish the story to make it more interesting, in a last-ditch effort for the story not to be a complete waste of time. However, I find it unlikely that most of my friends buy my story that I was in line at the DMV, and this woman cut me, and I kept clearing my throat and rolling my eyes, and she totally didn’t notice, and I was like “hemm, hemmm!” and she turned around but still didn’t even move… and then all four original members of KISS popped out from behind the counter and stabbed her in the stomach with the neck of a bass guitar."