I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

I overheard one of the older ladies at my office taking down an email address over the phone a while ago. She did the best she could with her existing knowledge base.

It reminded me of many, many conversations in which my brother and I were operating in entirely separate universes of understanding.

In middle school, I considered myself to be exceptionally brilliant at interpreting these communication disconnects. As proof of my powers, I pointed to my own masterful understanding of an incident that unfolded in my 6th grade World History class.

Our textbook included little historical fiction introductions to each section as a way to bring students into the moment.

When we got to the chapter on European feudalism, the introduction detailed a ceremony in which a medieval landholder granted a fief to an underling:

“I will be faithful to you and defend you,” the kneeling vassal declared. The lord then placed a clod of earth in the man’s hand. The earth symbolized the vassal’s right to use this land in exchange for his service to the lord.

This story did not help my classmate Annabelle dive into the 12th century. One word in particular tripped her up.

Our history teacher did not pick up on Annabelle’s concerns about the separation of church and state in our classroom. Instead, he gave her a helpful and informative explanation of the historical structures involved.

Personally, I couldn’t wait until we took geometry.

Extra Credit: Email address it would be really annoying to give out over the phone (from McSweeney’s) 

Object Lessons

I talk to inanimate objects a lot.

These are typically not the most thrilling conversations.

They hardly ever respond to me.

In fact, sometimes I think they aren’t even listening.

I hadn’t realized just how often I talk to things, though, until my brother started answering on their behalf.

That was also when I realized that the objects may have a fair reason not to obey me:

I’m not giving them nearly enough positive reinforcement.

Their work environment can get downright hostile.

So I’ve got a new plan of action. I’ll keep you posted on the results.

The Future Is Now

I was writing instructions for my office fax machine last week...

...when I made an error that opened my eyes to the possibilities we could have realized if technological development had taken a different path.

Of course, rewriting history is a double-edged sword.

Pretempathy

I am not always exactly the tops at compassion and human fellow-feeling. Various individuals who have been patient enough to live around me over the years can attest to this quality; they have all discovered my impressive ability to get aggravated over offenses that, in retrospect, might not actually require a full Red Alert.

As far as I can tell, this penchant for escalation is not a universal human trait. A few people I know seem supernaturally capable of seeing the best in everyone.

I, on the other hand, am considerably better suited to making up nonsense than to consistently appreciating the value of humanity. Luckily, this is a power that I can use to disguise my shortcomings.

In order to infiltrate productive society, I’ve started to artificially approximate empathy by inventing stories to explain other people’s behavior. It works particularly well with the phone calls I get at work.

These calls come in a variety of flavors, so I get a lot of practice.

My own demeanor, of course, never requires explanation.

Stop Callin', I Don' Wanna Think Anymore

Humanity really loves telephones. We’ve had them for a hundred and thirty years, and for the last couple of decades we’ve been carrying them around with us at all times. At least two people I work with daily keep their phones clipped to their heads, and people don’t even think that’s weird anymore.

So, with this vast cultural store of phone knowledge and a lifetime of personal experience, how can I still be so bad at it?

One of the reasons I’ve been blogging less regularly of late is a messy business situation that is taking up a lot of my time and requiring a lot of important-sounding phone calls. That’s how I discovered the danger of Sudden Aphorism Syndrome.

With email, you can spend a few minutes to formulate a thoughtful reply. You can also ignore messages for days until the sender confronts you in person, and then you can lie about internet connectivity problems. On the phone, meanwhile, you keep having to think of another thing to say RIGHT NOW.

When I’m pressed for meaningful statements without any prep time, some ancestral storage facility in my brain takes over and I start to spout down-home wisdom like an old-timey farmhand.

On the other end of the situationally-inappropriate-word-usage spectrum, I have now caught myself saying “pursuant to” over the phone in three separate conversations with people I know in real life.

Even without someone asking questions on the other end, the danger doesn’t stop. My second-greatest telephone enemy, after myself, is voicemail.

At work I leave a large number of phone messages, primarily of the “please send money” variety. These usually sound confidently professional right up until the last ten seconds, when my mouth has words left over after my brain has run out of information.

The wonderful thing about this medium is its permanence. Unlike the aforementioned conversation, recipients can replay messages to their hearts’ delight.

P. S. In case you finally got this out of your head.

EDIT: Yeah, so I did not watch the official video of that song before posting it. This is a different one with a lot less of...everything, really...