Mixed Messages

Grade 2. Lovely fall class room. Construction paper leaves adorn the walls and the alphabet runs its comfortable circle around the classroom near the ceiling like an annual school hug. Mrs. Y:  "Children your brain is the computer of your body. We will fill it with information and you will solve problems just like IBM". Hold up Mrs. Y. Yes, my brain is an intricate system. Pathways for pain, autonomous body function, memory, pleasure, higher judgment.....I have been filling it with information for another 40 or so years now but my brain is not just like a computer. I cannot reboot, defragment, or alt control delete my brain. I cannot, try as I might, erase the hard drive. I often want to but I cannot.

Every one talks these days about screen time and no real communication. That argument has merit. The world outside of cell phones, televisions and tablets also has many voices -often too many. I sometimes have trouble trying to decipher who to and not to listen to or whether to listen at all. In my nearly 5 decades I have lived an interesting life. My brain is full of stories, memories, experience and I have listened. Listened to so many stories....friends, counselling clients, children, relatives, coworkers. Do I have room in the old brain for all of this?

There are people who just talk. Meaningless pleasant drivel. Most of them understand the basic etiquette of not discussing religion, politics, money or sex in polite society. This kind of talk is mostly handleable. It is what we used to call small talk. Mostly unnecessary but fills some time.

On the other side of the coin are the deep, dark talkers. The ones who should really say : "Hey, allow me to dump all this really heavy emotional crap on you and then I will move on to get attention and sympathy from someone else while I do absolutely nothing about any of it."


The Agenda talkers also have a purpose. That is to bias you. Here is a story about X. X did this. Last time X did this to Y. If you talk to X this will happen to you. This type of communication tends to be self serving to the utmost. Unless it is your Mother.

The touchy talker also gets a mention. It is just me, mostly, but the touchy, huggy, standing too close to me talker is the hardest to understand. I have ears. I can hear you. Please do not invade my space.  Believe me:  I am sure what you need to say is important.  At least to you.  However, I am not in a super secret spy agency and your need to go pee is not a state secret.  There is no need for you to lean in and whisper like no one in the history of the planet ever peed before.

Most hilarious for me are the Third Party chatters. They definitely have something to say. Usually to you but will they talk to you? No. Much better to loudly voice their concerns to a small child, nearby animal, their spouse or just the air. I once witnessed a gentleman with a 9 month old baby very publicly lecturing said baby on how close a nearby man had parked to his car. Apparently he found the proximity of the other car distressing. I am not certain why he felt his 9 month old could rectify the situation. I am sure the other man would have preferred a straightforward, "Could you move your car?" To a booming, " Well, Timmy I guess this guy over here doesn't care if his car gets scratched!!!"

No wonder we are confused. Quite understandable that we have been choosing to grab headphones and check out since 1981. Heck some of us carried a boom box around before earphones and walkmen were even a thing.

Is conversation meaningful ? Is it drivel or is someone trying to tell me something? I don't know most of the time. Kind of wish people came with a sign to tell me how to take them.

Hey, do you think we could require people to wear an emoticon shirt? Wear the "ice cream" one if  it is small talk day, the happy face if you are straightforward, the serious face if you wanna tell me something that has some weird hidden deeper implications, and the embarrassed smiley if you are going to talk about yourself all day.

Valid debate, close conversations between pals and family, the chatter of children is great.  The rest, sadly :  just more noise.

The Eff Word

It is like it's an accent.  A dialect. Perhaps, in the small town where I live babies speak their first sentences peppered with it.  It's not Fire Truck.

A light bulb came on for me today about how the people I interact with, speak.  You see, I just spent five days in another city.  A larger city.  I spent a lot of time downtown with a variety of people:  business people, vacationers, homeless people, gangbangers and teenagers.  There were the elderly dealing with advancing age and mobility issues. People who are busy, some who have very little, lots who are frustrated in ways big and small.  Some of the time I spent in the hospital where I met people in very high stress situations: people who were losing and had just lost family. People who had friends and family members admitted for long stretches of time.  The families I met at the hospital had every reason to swear.  I spent time other places too. The mall, stores, restaurants even cabs and city buses. I don't remember hearing that one word, not even once. Or any of his less offensive younger cousins.

I hardly noticed when I was there but there was something missing.  That accent.  In the whole time I was in London, Ontario I didn't hear anyone punctuate their sentence with an eff bomb.  In fact, I would be hard pressed to say that I heard anyone swear even once.

Now, I certainly cannot say that no one swears in the city.  That would be an effing ridiculous statement.  What I can say is that I returned home to my apartment today and within ten minutes had opened my balcony door.  Floating up to me in the warmish night air were the dulcet tones of my neighbours having what passes for a normal everyday conversation around here.

It went something like this: " And then I effing told him that he effing needed to make an effing call.  They are not going to effing fix his effing car if he doesn't effing tell them when he effing wants it done."  It went on longer but I am sure you get the drift.  Ah, there's that local dialect again.  I must be home.

Mind you, I wasn't witnessing an argument.  The conversation was not heated or debated.  Just one man passing along a story about his day to another.  I wish I could say that it is an isolated thing but it is not.  This is the way a lot of people speak here.  A chat on the bus, a conversation at work, a simple coffee order at the local Tim's......pretty much every day, multiple times a day you witness this use of vulgar language.  Even in schoolkids, teenagers and the elderly.  Wow, I would say especially amongst the middleaged population.

So I ask why.  I was raised mostly in Niagara and Stratford.  I really do not remember it there.  No one felt the only way to be heard was to salt our speech with nasty epithets.  Truth, most of the people I knew spoke plainly or eloquently with no swearing at all. Sure, there were a few people who threw in the occasional "bad" word.  They thought they were rebels and we mostly laughed at them for how stupid it sounded.  Oooh, big man said a bad word.....I'm shaking.  With mirth.

Does it bother me? Not on a moral level but it is tiresome to hear daily.  Being around it  I find myself slipping into this habit.  That, in and of itself, bothers me quite a bit.  After spending most of my life with pretty good verbal hygiene I don't like being infected with the local accent. I fight it consciously but it is slipping in.

It's annoying to hear the kindergarteners speaking this way- and they do.  There is so much more to say.  More productive things, more positive, more useful words.  It is frustrating to try to deal with an individual's concerns when their go-to method of communicating is so inherently disrespectful to both the listener and speaker. I wonder if no one ever taught any of them how to make a valid point with clear emphatic language and tone.

I also wonder if they kiss their Mothers with those dirty mouths. Bet Momma would be proud.