The Courtesy Trap

Generally an affliction associated with a certain age and/or background. Essentially this is the legacy of being raised to be polite, the tendrils of which behavioural modification wrap themselves around a young brain and never let go.

The result, even decades later, is an inability to disengage from conversations with weirdos at bus stops, old women in supermarkets etc. and the resultant vanishing of any time pocket, it being replaced by an unwanted knowledge of a stranger's travails regarding their pet budgie's hernia problem.

The Courtesy Trap is a particularly stressful situation for the well-mannered misanthrope.