Communcation Revolution: Quashed!

“I’d love to hang out, but I need to wash my hair… all day… and until later this evening. You know, lather, rinse, and repeat? Maybe some other time.”

“But, you’re the one who said we should hang out. You even picked the day!”

“Well, I did, but that was until I got so busy with paying attention to my hair follicles. Sorry!”

This person got off light. I got a non-specific vague implication of suddenly being busy. So, I’m supposed to be sad, sit at home and eat ice cream, waiting until this person says they want to hang out again, right? Instead I make other plans.

I also let it out to a few friends who all have had a similar experiences recently.

“That happened to me the other day. So-and-so who I haven’t seen in forever calls me out of the blue and we make plans. The morning before I leave to meet her, she’s all *cough* *cough* ‘I don’t feel so well’ *cough*.”

“What’s that? It just makes you never want to have anything to do with them again.”

“Exactly. Just don’t make plans in the first place. Or tell the truth.”

“Yeah, at that point the truth is not going to have a worse effect.”

I’m a little annoyed at and confused by humanity. Why can’t people say what they mean?

It makes me feel like attempted communication with most people is useless, because there’s no actual connection being made. A bunch of words spew out, you think you are on the same page, and instead you’re a million miles apart. Every once in awhile something spectacular happens and someone actually picks up what you’re putting down. You both hold onto it, run with it, and friendships are born. With all the bullshit people say and do, it’s a minor miracle.

It’s a full out miracle when it stays for the long haul. I am lucky to have a handful of friends that fall into that category.

I’m unlucky that they don’t live close by.

I’ve been a bit hard on myself lately that I don’t have the ‘buddies’ to hang out with in this area that I once had. I haven’t lived here for over five years and people have moved, moved on, changed phone numbers, changed emails, and lost touch- sometimes even fallen out. In addition, this area of the United States of America contains people with a particular attitude on friendship and communication. I grew up here. If you want to be close, you’re clingy. If you’re open, you’re a freak. Being distant is cool. Meanwhile, in college I got used to asking friends if they wanted to go to the grocery store together. I’d get calls asking if I wanted to hang out and do laundry together. I could show up at someone’s door and call up ‘Lemme in!’ and be invited to stick around for dinner.

Life is short, and people around here are spending it being standoffish. In Maine and Virgina I became close to people quickly. We found one connection and ran with it. We found joy in getting lost in the car together or driving around nowhere all night knowing exactly where we were.

I am sad because those friends are still out there, but they’re too far away. I’m sad because I did have a few people here that it took me my whole childhood to find. And they have since scattered or fallen out of view. I drive by those places and have a fit of stir-crazy nostalgia.

Moving is a terribly hard adjustment, and I’m finding that moving back after being gone so terribly long is even worse. Everything is a comparison. Everything bares a past bias that is hard to shake. When I moved back, I was hoping my views of this area were youthfully prejudicial. I hate it that I was right all those years growing up. It’s worse now that I’ve lived other places and seen that other people are like me in their approach to people and friendship.

I have plans next weekend with an old friend, and I know we will be hanging out unless there is an act of god. I know if something comes up, the truth will be told and we’ll see again soon.

I’m pissed at humanity, but grateful to my friends. Here’s to them.

Follow up posts:
Wednesday Night

Historical posts:
Communication Technology

  • I feel you, I have hardly any friends where I live. And I’ve lived here for 4 years. That could be just me though.

    I have a few friends from my old work, but that wasn’t actually near here, and was one of those places that draws people in from the surroundings, so that while I lived 50 minutes from work, many of my friends lived another 50 minutes out the other side. Which meant that when I stopped working their I lost touch completely.

    My current work is much less “my style” all blokey bonding over sports and the like. (If at all, it is a software company after all, we shouldn’t be too friendly, someone would think we’d caught “teh gay”.) Plus there’s a clear distinction between the old hands who’ve worked together for 20 years, and the graddies who all get drunk together. Being neither old, nor an alcoholic I slip between the crack somewhat.

    But that’s just me, I could lose touch with my left hand if I wasn’t using it for typing (and knife holding) all the time. (Strangely I never figured out which “handed” I was, I think I’m supposed to be ambidextrous, but I learnt most things right handed. I could be just a little left handed though, which might explain why my handwriting is appalling. At this point 27 years of practice with my right hand makes it all a bit academic though… I wonder how many other people fall into this group?)

    I also feel for you on the moving back thing, I couldn’t move back none of my old friends live where I grew up.

    On the up side though, I tend to let the subtleties of human behaviour wash over me when talking to people. So I miss out on being upset by this kind of stupid behaviour. (And most of the friends I still have are pathologically direct, or too stupid / intelligent to engage in these subtle deceptions.)

    Good grief, I’ve written all this and my code’s still in the process of checking in. Sigh…

  • Not old or alcoholic? Geez, Tom, you’re so not hanging out material. ;) I would think people at a software company get together and play video games or drool over each other’s tech toys.

    If you hold your knife left handed, you’re probably at least somewhat ambidextrous- it runs in my family too. My little bro would switch hands on us until he started school. Then he chose the left hand for most stuff, but he does some random things with his right. I’m the same way, only I chose right for most things.

    I too prefer direct people, and am lucky that most of my friends are (or at least they are with me). That kind of passive aggressive behavior gets to me even more because I usually don’t notice it right off, or miss it completely.

    That’s when I care, when I feel like I’m on the same page as someone and suddenly I ‘get it’ (take a hint, get a clue, etc.). It’s such a waste of time and energy for everyone involved. I lose at mind games, and I’m not going to insert another coin to continue. I move on, but it’s still pretty irritating.

  • Gadgets rapidly become penis-proxies when hanging out with geeks. If someone’s bought an N95, someone else will have an iPhone (or will go out and buy one that afternoon, beware the well-paid geek!) If you’ve bought a 10megapixel DSLR someone will have a 12megapixel one.

    It’s all rather tedious really.

    They spend hours talking about TVs. (literally, two people in the office were in the market for new TVs and it was a talking point for at least a week.)

    Ah well, I’m determined to remain cheerfully oblivious (although the little punctured feeling when you realize is horrible, the social equivalent of taking a step when your feet have fallen asleep). I had a friend who would delight in manipulating people who played mind games, because it wound them up so much. Apparently people who try to be unpredictable are really easy to predict, and hence really easy to irritate (because they’re trying to hard to be unpredictable). Likewise people who try to manipulate other people all the time, can be easily manipulated, apparantly. Not my idea of fun, but she enjoyed doing it.

    She said I was very unpredictable, so I decided not to think about that too much. Didn’t want to break my lucky streak.

  • I have a 13 inch Sony tv from the 80s. Someone was throwing it out, so I grabbed it. :) Being a woman, I don’t want to have a penis (proxy or otherwise), so I win!

    With communication being so high tech and affordable, it would be nice if transportation were to follow suit. If we could chose our friends to hang out with over the globe and pop over after work… Think about it- we could then live and work a million miles apart. Instead, no one wants to go anywhere because it’s so stressful to fly and it’s expensive to even drive (in the States at least). We need a teleportation device. Mac would get on board in fear that people wouldn’t use their iPods so much (not driving all over hell and creation)… it’d be called the iTrans.

    If people need something to manipulate, they should get a rubix cube (or a life of their own :D).

  • The Cowboy

    Rubik’s cube: $10
    iTrans: $474,999.99
    Hanging out with reasonably sane friends who live across the globe and already having that manipulation urge out of your system when you get there: Priceless.

    When the iTrans goes into production let’s trade numbers :D

    I’m with Massif. People like that used to really get me worked up until my first anxiety attack. After that I kind of had to prioritize what I allowed to bug me. Having a complete meltdown can help put some of lifes anxieites into perspective.

    It’s usually not as bad as it looks anyway. Something came up so they lie in order to spare your feeling from being hurt by knowing that something else or someone else is more important to them than you are, which becomes painfully apparent and hurts your feelings anyway with the added insult of the fact that they’ll lie to you so casually. In their own way though, they care. That probably didn’t help…

  • In some cases they don’t care. They really just want to keep up appearances. I thought I was friends with a guy who was best friends with one of my closest friends. I thought we were becoming close when he went around my back and said to the mutual friend, “Make her stop calling me! She’s bugging the crap out of me!”. I was pretty confused. I realize in some people’s worlds, keeping up the appearance of being nice and supportive is more important than actually not being an asshole. It’s like those people who clear their plate at dinner even though they’re not hungry and the food is bad, and won’t say no if you ask if they want seconds. You think the meatloaf is their favorite until you hear it from someone else. It doesn’t matter who Ms. Meatloaf is, that person always gets to feel like a moron for at least a split second. The real moron is the Meatloaf Binger who is living a meatloaf lie.

    You commercial was hilarious. :) Not only will the iTrans cost that much, it will need a yearly subscription, the purchasing of a wall charger that is not included, and you’ll need to buy new ones for more memory to hold more ‘numbers’.

    Sound familiar?

  • The Cowboy

    Quite. I think I may have just bought one, or at least something nearly as expensive :D

  • Pingback: ME + YOUr attention = The Seize - Cindy Chiuchiolo's Blog » Blogging()