Communications Issues
My wife and I communicate differently. As I write that, I realize that it makes it sound like we use smoke signals instead of cell phones, or have created our own language out of high pitched dolphin shrieks. And while those things would be really cool, that is not what I am trying to say.
Although since I am on the subject of communicating differently, everybody knows, thanks to Tomax and Xamot, that twins can telepathically feel pain from their sibling regardless of any distance involved. Which means that I could theoretically rig up a crude Morse code system based off of tormenting one of my twins, and then interpreting the other’s distress. This would definitely be a different way of communicating, and would frankly be of some pretty hefty financial significance to the right intelligence service or large corporation. I’m pretty sure the Scream-a-phone could be a huge success and my wife is reading over my shoulder and has just informed me that I am no longer allowed to explore telecommunications as a career field. It’s like she wants us to be poor.
What I meant to say is that when communicating, my wife and I do it in a different manner from each other. Specifically, we use the same language and words to mean entirely different things. I’m not sure how much of this is gender, or genetics, or even if it’s just because we were raised differently. But it can lead to some very unusual problems.
My wife has a tendency to view the world as a series of obligations. There are rules, and there are consequences. Sure these things may be manipulated to your benefit, but they must be adhered to.
So for instance, when my wife says “Can you put that fish skin down the garbage disposal?” this is a combination of an ethics problem and mechanical engineering. What she thinks she is asking me is “”Should you put fish skin down the garbage disposal?” and furthermore it is implied “Will something bad result if my husband puts that fish skin down there. Could it damage the garbage disposal, or would it could as an environmental hazard like dumping grease down the drain?”
I on the other hand, tend to view the world as a series of events that I can get away with. So when I hear “Can you put that fish skin down the garbage disposal?” I interpret it as a physics problem.
“Yep, looks like it will fit.” *griiiiind*
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April 6th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
That really cracked me up. “*griiiiind*”
I believe that the language you communicate in is called “engineer”.
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StoneWolf reply on April 7th, 2010 4:09 am:
Actually, Skippy is encountering a dual problem. Firstly, he is encountering the male/femal commo discrepancy. On top of that he is running into the techie/layman divide.
I had this problem with an old girlfriend. She would complain about something. To me, this is a work order, usually with the problem detailed (she really liked to talk), and I knew her well enough to understand the relevant parameters, so I set about resolving the problem. Or, on occasion, become confused and distressed when there was no way for me to solve said problem (it was at her work or something) and there was nothing I could do to fix it. What she actually wanted was a hug and a shoulder to cry on. I finally convinced her that, if that’s all she wanted, just to preface her problem with “I just need a hug.” Then I know she needs sympathy and isn’t issueing a work order.
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April 6th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Sounds about right to me. Women are posing a philosophical, legal and emotional quandary and we hear a challenge.
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April 6th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
See, I translated it as “Will you get off your lazy ass and put this fish down the garbage disposal already??” .. Guess I fail at Male AND Female languages.
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Willy reply on April 6th, 2010 2:51 pm:
That was my first though.
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Blue reply on April 6th, 2010 5:58 pm:
Mine too.
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Tyr reply on April 7th, 2010 1:25 pm:
Aye, that seems to be the truth.
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April 6th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
I don’t know if it’s genetics, my dad and I communicate completely differently. He used to build houses for a living and is still something of a handyman, which means that he likes taking on various remodoling or construction projects, pretty much anything useful he can achieve with a hammer, some nails, and a few 2×4’s. I have grown up having to help him with these things. I have come to hate such projects for two reasons. One, he will tell me to do something and I will do it, and it will almost always be wrong (and I really hate being wrong), even if it is exactly what he told me to do, ususally because he messed up in his instructions and tells me that I should have known what he meant. Although interpreting what he tells me to do is still something of a feat becase his intsructions tend to be something along the lines of “Hey, can you go get me that thing?”, “What thing?, “Well, you know the black-handled thing.”, “Dad, most of your tools are black”, “Well you know, the…(at this point he makes some vauge motion with his hands to indicate the thing’s shape or function) thing. It’s next to that other thing.” At which point I go in the garage and poke around for ten minutes, bringing him out various tools for him to see and putting them back until he gets frustrated enough to go get the tool himself, which is tucked in some obscure corner, and pantomimes hitting me over the head with it.
Yeah, I’m not going to be a carpenter when I grow up.
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SailorJoe reply on April 6th, 2010 8:17 pm:
hahahaha. oh man. your dad sounds like me sometimes.
but i use the more technical, thingamajig
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StoneWolf reply on April 7th, 2010 4:03 am:
My dad does that. “Hey, grab me the hoogafloppy!” Yes, he calls all tools hoogafloppies. If I’m lucky, I’m in a position to observe what he’s working on and can interpolate what tool he wants, re-enforcing his lack of need to learn proper names. If not, I usually demand that he describe the tool by function, and that tends to work well enough. Unfortunelty, when I finally got to the machine shop in highschool, while I know the function of all tools, I didn’t usually know what they were called. This still bites me in the ass sometimes nearly a decade later.
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Jim A reply on April 7th, 2010 12:28 pm:
You know, I find myself pantomiming the use of a tool when I’m trying to find it and nobody else is around. There I am, wandering through the house, squeezing my fingers while looking for scisors. Which I can only find after I’ve broken down and bought another pair. Eomeday, I’ll reach a state where every horizantal surface in my house has a hammer, screwdrivers, boxcutter, and a pair of scissors on it and I won’t have to look anymore.
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Minty reply on April 8th, 2010 6:38 pm:
Don’t talk to me about missing scissors. My roommate and I have decided that the house elves stole them all in the space of a week. And I do mean ALL. The three kitchen scissors, the cheap ones we use to cut paper and string, both sets of cloth shears, and my embroidery scissors.
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Amy reply on April 9th, 2010 1:28 pm:
Oh, I’m laughing and crying. It’s all true. Yes, squeezing fingers together.. imitating the use of said Hogafloppy. And Amen. Every horizontal surface will have nail, saw, hammer, scissors…
April 7th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
‘Course, being a female engineer, I sometimes don’t know what I’m saying. ~_^
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April 10th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Ti took me 25 years of marriage to get where Skippy is now. I finally learned that when I said something like “We need to lay off using the credit card until we get some income” and she nodded that she meant “You’re speaking English” not “I agree”. Fortunately credit card companies are very forgiving if you don’t pay your balance.
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