Tuesday, March 2, 2010

What's wrong. What are you doing. What is my purpose. What is a rooster?


You know what's weird? When somebody tells you something, and you say "What?" even if you heard them perfectly fine. I do this to other people all the time without even thinking about it. It's like I need an extra second to respond, or something.
And other people do it too. When I'm talking to somebody and I ask them a question whose answer will make absolutely no difference at all on my life or anybody else's in the universe, and they say, "What?" I usually just say "Never mind." And then they answer me. And I wonder why they didn't just answer in the first place. And then I remember that I do the exact same thing to others.
In books and movies and whatnot, the characters always hear each other perfectly. During long dialogues between people, there is never a "What?" In real life, people are going, "What?" every few minutes. Listen to your conversations. It happens so often. So often we don't even notice it anymore. But in books and movies it happens so rarely that we don't even notice how unrealistic it is for two apparently modern-day teens to have a conversation that lasts the front and back of a page without once saying "What?"
It's kind of handy for me, though. Whenever I try to explain something more complicated than how to work a toaster, I start making all these analogies to totally unrelated things, and detail far too much, and wave my fingers around in front of me thinking maybe they will stir up the words and rearrange them into a commentary that actually makes sense.
And then people say, "What?" Even if they heard me. Even if I --gasp!-- made sense. It's a reflex, and I can always brush away my insanity with a "Never mind."
It's just odd. An oddity.
I was only thinking about it because I noticed it happening about a million times today.

Speaking of talking, I found this wonderful Stephen King quote today. About a minute ago, actually. It reminds me of something I was talking about on here earlier.Mucho love~~

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