How to escape a boring conversation.

Aren't you more easily bored as the days pass? You're becoming selfish about your ever-dwindling time left on this spinning blue marble. When someone begins a long story, you ache for the punchline that will set you free to revisit your favorite bartender.

Some people live for being on stage; that doesn't mean you need to join the audience. When the babble begins, here are simple ways to remove yourself:

1. Fake a sneeze and make sure a booger dangles off the tip of your nose like a disease-ridden pendulum.
2. Begin tweaking your own nipples.
3. Unlock your phone and continue your Scrabble game. Interrupt and ask what four-letter word you could make from the letters N-W-A-Y.
4. Tug your undies from your butt crack and then sniff your fingers.
5. Look around and say, "What's that smell? Is it blue cheese stuffed olives? I must have one right this second or I shall perish."
6. Laugh before the punchline, spit up a little, and run to the restroom.
7. Ask the speaker to hold that thought while you search your purse for earbuds.
8. Blow bubbles through the straw in your mojito.
9. Yell, "He shoots; he scores!" (This works best if there is a TV in the vicinity with hockey, basketball, or soccer playing.)
10. Floss.

In case you're wondering if you are one of the offending parties (just wondering suggests you probably are), before continuing the extended rant, see if the subject of your dissertation is any of the following:

• Your children, pets, or coworkers.
• A picture, video, or cool app on your phone.
• The election.
• Church.
• Hot dog ingredients or the caloric content of anything.
• An odd-looking mole you found on the back of your neck.
• Plants.
• Any TV show from the 90s.
• How much money you saved by ... anything.
• The weather.

If it's on the list, stop immediately, apologize, and fetch a round of shots--not the cheap, fruity kind either--for those you have offended.

This is national low-tolerance month. Do your part.