Seems like we had a recent huddle about miscommunication in texting and guess what? Failure-to-communicate happens in regular old phone conversations! Who knew?
Not hearing what someone says is different than not listening or refusing to hear. But when you’re on the phone you can’t read lips or body language in order to get a grasp on what’s really going on. So, you punt.
Cara Sroges deals with that this week in The Coffee Table. She says don’t ask unless you’re willing to hear an answer. That makes sense, but who among us has ever made sense?
So, my garage friend and I had a conversation Sunday that started with could I give him a ride so he could drop his pickup at the mechanic’s. Sure!
OK, call me when you’re ready.
Ready was 40 minutes later. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
I waited. He waited. We waited a significant amount of time for each other. He finally called and said Are you coming?
I said I’m following you to the mechanic’s, right?
He said I’m already there.
I said I don’t know where that is.
He said Oh it’s easy, just a few miles, turn right, I’ll be standing on the side of the road.
It was easy, but like many things, it had to be hard first.
Did you know that listening is a skill? That we master it the way we learn to read and write? That it takes practice? Me neither.
I plucked him off the side of the road and we headed back to his garage where the refrigerator was loaded with beer brewed by Republican donors. He always mentions that. I really should contribute to the beer kitty so we could get the more expensive and politically liberal beer crafted in Eureka Springs, but you know how that goes. I had a dollar in my pocket, but it’s my lucky dollar that I won’t spend. I’ve carried it since the SWEPCO giant-towers-in-our-yards was defeated eight years ago. Long story, but nobody wants to listen to that.
Once we settled by the woodstove, popped our tops and got over laughing about our earlier puzzling communication, we talked about vaccinations. We’re on different emotional rungs about those, but we kept going without judgment.
We moved on to Oprah Winfrey, who even though neither of us knows her, we both admire her sass and look the other way when she gets, oh you know, all TV-ey. Isn’t it enough to know that a smart coyote lets the rabbit run into its mouth rather than warning the rabbit and scolding the coyote and expecting things to turn out our way? Pure Oprah.
From there we landed on County Judge Arthur Carter, who got the Carroll County Airport built. Judge Carter drove a white Cadillac with gold trim and a Prisoner of War license plate. He survived the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, 79 years ago this month.
Judge Carter once told respectable and respected Ken O’Toole, publisher of the Journal of Carroll County, that he knew he would have a good life if he could just get home to Carroll County. He also said iguana tastes just like chicken, it’ll do when your stomach is gnawing.
Mr. Carter did get home, and he spent 28 years paving our county’s dirt roads while also making new dirt ones.
When talking about war, shots in the deltoid, and great people we had the pleasure to know got too weighty, we sploshed into why canoe and kayak trucks tear up county roads and use county boat docks to drop off adventurers all day long, yet don’t pay a dime for the damage they do to those roads, docks and neighborhoods while making money on every person who wants to be on the free river.
Neither of us remembers things exactly as they happen, ever, but both of us hope we both live long enough to miscommunicate until we either get it or un-remember it.