BOSTON—Realizing that the short, rehearsed speech had not been revised to reflect recent changes in his life, 29-year-old marketing associate Alex Hansen confirmed Wednesday that he had updated the little monologue he delivers every time a member of his extended family asks how he’s doing. “I’ll still start by saying work has been going well and that I’m still in Boston, but I’m tweaking that part about where I live to convey that I have my own apartment now,” Hansen said of the brief but carefully crafted oration he recites almost reflexively when encountering second cousins at family gatherings or receiving the occasional phone call from a grandparent. “The part where I say I’ve been playing on an intramural soccer team once a week doesn’t really seem to land, so I’ve swapped that out with a few seconds on how I’m thinking about running a marathon. And now I’m closing with how I might go to law school—that seems like a pretty strong finish.” Hansen added that it will be easier to simply preserve the portion of the monologue about his girlfriend doing great despite the fact that she broke up with him three months ago.

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