I sent an email once and it simply said Hi. Are the two of you planning on playing
with me and my partner for the upcoming tournament? If not, let me know ASAP so
I can find two others for my foursome.
I hit “send” and I thought nothing more about it.
Which is why I was so puzzled when I received a phone call from my friend a
short while later and she said Are you
mad at me? And I said no—why would I
be? And she said well my partner got
your email and she said that it had an angry tone to it. And I thought hmm really? And so I pulled it up on the
computer and read it to my friend in an even tone. My friend said Oh—okay—that doesn’t sound angry to me at
all---and by the way “yes”—we would love to play with you. And it was over.
One night around 11:00 pm I texted one of my daughters
and wrote What time do you want me to
pick you up? I clicked the green button on my cell phone and thought
nothing more about it. But minutes later my daughter called and without even
stopping for a breath said What do you
mean what time should you pick me up? Don’t you know it is still so early? I am
just hanging out with my friends. You always think I am doing something bad. I
am not bad. You should know what bad kids do. I am not doing anything. And I am
not coming home yet—it’s only 11:00. I will text you later and tell you what
time you should come and get me.
And once the air was expelled from her lungs I calmly
responded with All I wanted to know was
what time I should pick you up--you are the one reading something more into my
text and taking it to an unintended level.
I wrote a blog post last week about bringing some
housewarming gifts to a friend and how the gifts I brought were designed to
ward off envious thoughts of others. And I heard back from several people who
enjoyed my references to Italian culture and found the post to be warm and
lighthearted. But one person had a totally different spin on my writing—she emailed
me a double-barreled question: Did anyone
tell you your writing seems to have an undertone that suggests a strong dislike
for Garden City?
And so I stopped and thought--I love Garden City—it’s
why I have remained here for 26 years. I love Garden City even with its warts. It’s
why I am so comfortable exploiting its flavor. And secondly, if anything, I
think my writing has an overtone—not an
undertone. I think when I get into
trouble with my blog writing it is because I make my point crystal clear to the
point of abject nakedness. My tone resonates like a bullhorn---there is nothing
surreptitious about it.
But for the entire rest of day, that email bothered
me. I reread that email 30 times making sure I did not read something into it
that wasn’t there. And I could not figure out whether my writing itself was
murky thus rendering an unintended connotation or whether the person reading it
was simply projecting---maybe she herself had a negative view of Garden City
and thrust it on me to avoid her own feelings of disdain.
It still remains a mystery to me.
But I can tell you what I didn’t do. I did not reply
to the email. I was too afraid. I feared that no matter what I wrote it would
be misconstrued. If I laughingly said No ha
ha!! she might think I was snickering. If I just said Nope. she might think I was being haughty. And if I apologized for
being seemingly negative it would validate her belief that being negative was
my intention in the first place. No matter what response I came up with it was
sure to be read with a self-generated deleterious undertone. And so ultimately I
said nothing.
Sometimes saying nothing speaks volumes.
yup!
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