COMMUNICATION CRAZIES

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

I’m not sure I understand everything I know about this, as my father in law used to say.  But sometimes our family gets the “Communication Crazies.”

All I said was that liquor goes to your head faster if you drink on an empty stomach, at which my thirteen year old daughter remarked that it would do it even faster if you stood on your head.

The Communication Crazies are especially funny when they catch you by surprise.  At dinner my husband, speaking about a grade point average, said, “I’m sure it has to be high to get honors,” to which our daughter responded, “It ought to be!   You put enough Tabasco on it!”  

Sometimes Communication Crazies are embarrassing.  I had been sifting through information at the library for two hours when I went to the desk for help.  The harder I tried to speak, the more I stuttered.  I finally said, “I’ve been reading so long I can’t talk.”  Having accomplished speaking that complete sentence, I left.

Sometimes the Communication Crazies hit just because you are talking too fast.  My son describes it thus:  “If someone is saying something sixty thousand miles an hour and they don’t make sense, you pick up your camera and tell them, ‘I’m looking inside your head at your brain, and it looks like a double exposure.’”

Some things come out backwards when you try to communicate them.  Last week a girl at a financial service company was trying to explain the economics of bid and asked prices of gold certificates.  She said, “You just have to buy high and sell low.”  I thought, “Yes, that’s what my husband says I do all the time.”

Communications really get crazy when you throw in a dash of Southern accent.  I went to a pancake breakfast at the American Legion.  As I approached, I wondered if the people standing outside the door were coming or going, so I asked, “Is this the line?”  The answer I got was, “No, this is the Legion.”  ……That’s okay.  It took me a few minutes, too.