There are, as you may have noticed, chronological phases to the simple act of greeting and responding to someone you meet. There isn't the one simple answer you might imagine would suffice.

In fact, it's so chronologically predictable I'm considering an application to the government for a grant to study it. Here are my brief, unpaid for, observations to date. The final million-dollar research grant product will be twice as long and have illustrative graphs.

Young people, for example, say "Hi" to which the inevitable answer is "Hi." It doesn't get any better than this. In fact, in the interests of general mental health, I'd say we ban greetings from this point forward because -- well, you'll see why.

Later, when kids become young adults and enter the more formal phase of life, "Hi" becomes "How are you?" with an accompanying handshake, or hugs and air kissing if opposite sexes are involved. The inevitable and correct answer to this general question is "Fine" or, if you're very polite, "Fine, and you?" At twenty-something, what is there not to be fine about?

Some years later, thirties say, when families, mortgages, car loans and other concerns begin to weigh on the psyche, the answer to "How are you," becomes a much less optimistic "Can't complain." This is the start of a downward slide that should be nipped in the bud because...

Sometime later still, forties maybe, that sombre response downgrades into, "Can't complain and when I do, nobody listens." This is the end of being young and we know it, whatever the phrase, "Sixty is the new forty" may lead you to believe.

As university fees and the other millstones of middle adulthood kick in, now we're in our fifties, even that dismal answer is insufficient and, for a time, "Don't ask," followed by a wry expression and a groan is the general response to, "How are you?" One would expect that when the millstones pass out of the system, our sixties, we'd become more optimistic again but, sadly, it isn't so. As we slide from that gloomy stage to the next, the question of, "How are you," brings a list of symptoms even a doctor would cut short.

I promised myself, years ago and after a particularly long and gruesome list from my father, I'd go back to answering "I'm fine" but now I'm entering this more mature age I've changed my mind about that because I've discovered why older people answer the way they do.

They answer the way they do because, if your response is, "Fine, and how are you," you get to listen to a long list of the other fellow's aches and pains, which is the last thing you want when your own hold on life is so tenuously fragile.

Old people tell you their symptoms to stop you telling them yours, which is extremely selfish of them but also extremely understandable. I, for one, have every symptom I've ever heard or read about and need protection from this kind of mental abuse. The result of this is, from now on, I'm cultivating a growing list of aches, pains, and stomach-churning feelings of ill-health that you or anyone else will have to be actually dead to cap.

And, as I mentioned earlier, I'm also cultivating an application for a million-dollar grant to study the relationship between greetings and age. The problems of aging are going to be big business for the next 30 years and I want a piece of the action. That's how I am. How are you?