"I don't care"

I went for a walk today with one of my former work colleagues. He is gay and originally from a conservative part of the country.

"When people in my hometown see me with my boyfriend and figure out we are a couple, they act all super sweet. It is performative," he said. "When people see us in Seattle, they don't care if we are gay or not."

I don't care. What does that mean? There are so many ways those three words can be interpreted. It is like the expression "Too bad" where tone matters. The French have multiple ways to say "too bad" ranging in meaning from "my deepest condolences your grandmother died" (je suis desolee) to "I am sorry your car broke down (quel domage). Tant pis, like "I don't care," can be kind or cruel, meaning either "oh well" or "tough shit" depending on the context and tone.

My friend H from college lived in Taiwan until moved to the US when she was seven. While her English is undistinguishable from a native born American, she was missing a few idioms.

"Lauren," she asked me once, years ago, "where do you want to go for dinner?"

"I don't care," I replied.

"How can you not care? You should care where we go to dinner!" she replied. 

Uh...I thought I was giving her space to chose the restaurant. Fortunately, I realized she was having a glitch in her internal American dictionary. I recovered with "I am open and flexible with where we go."

Still, "I don't care" is tricky. It can seen as belittling or dismissive. "I don't care that the former police chief in Seattle was a Black woman" can mean I am simply tolerant. I could mean I am apathetic. I could mean that I am embracing a non-white man leading the city's police force. 

At best, "I don't care" is imprecise. Sometimes imprecise can be fine, but other times, it matters. Like all other language, half of communication is what the other person hears. My friend H's feelings were hurt when I told her I don't care, which of course was not at all my intension. 

I apologized because I care more about her feelings than I did about where we ate dinner.