I’m one of those people who talks before he thinks. No malice, no ill-intent; it’s just that forming words doesn’t require any kind of conscious intervention on my part, so it tends to just happen, without much awareness until it’s already happened.
Which means I spend a lot of time saying “oh, wait, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Today, I had a real beauty. I was gonna go out and work on my latest text adventure with my friend Kevin, and I hadn’t told my spouse this yet, but I came up to talk to him. So, we were talking, and he made some comment about shaving (I get fairly scruffy before I bother, most of the time). The dialogue went something like this:
Him: You should shave.
Me: (grinning) I suppose that improves my chances of getting laid, huh?
Him: Generally, yes.
Me: Well, then I guess I should go shave before I go out with Kevin.
General hilarity ensues. I would guess that I had already said the word “out” before the part of my brain that processes things started thinking “hmm, should I have said this that way?”. I know what happened. I wished to share several pieces of information:
- I am going to go shave.
- Implication: I'm feeling flirty.
- By the way, I'm going out in a bit.
- Kevin and I are working on our game again.
This isn’t the only example of critical failures in attempts to communicate, but it’s one of my most stunning.
Comments [archived]
From: Jesse
Date: 2003-06-04 02:33:26 -0500
You forgot to mention my reply:
“Then make sure to bring the camera."
-J