Sorta Senseless Sunday Sarcasm : Context

There was a time I’d roll into a tiny ball of uncertainty and scamper away to the next room, the next city, or (preferably) the next state when someone told me, “You’re not making any sense.”

That is, undoubtedly, one of the reasons I’ve had 5 husbands.

Then, as my father would’ve said, “I got wise.”

Language is more than words, it’s eye contact, facial expression, that twinkle in the eye when someone laughs at your joke and says, “You’re sick!”

Or the serious face when those same 2 1/2 words are said by some guy in a white coat with “Dr.” at the beginning of his name.

We knew what mom meant when she said, “Stop using 4-letter words!”  We didn’t stop using words like love, hope, care…or sick.

We knew that when dad said, “Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about,” it didn’t mean he’d punish us for bawling our eyes out if we’d just broken our leg.

Context, Context, Context!

I can talk to my sister-in-law using half sentences, and she knows exactly what I’m trying to say.

If we try talking like that to her brother, he says, “That doesn’t make any sense” or “You’re not using that word correctly, you should have used ______.”

Some days, I wonder if words are like the material needed to make a dress, or the wood needed to make a desk, or the tones needed to create the music?  What if the same person who knows how to drill, hammer, and glue words, doesn’t know how to dress the words — he’s a word-worker, and she’s a seam-stress.   

She can stitch together the basic concepts.

He can hammer in the point.

She embroideries her ideas with intonation, facial expression, and intricate designs.

He can polish his sentences until they shine.

He looks at her and says, “You have poor verbal communication skills.”

She points to her sister, her friend, or her boss and says, “They understand me quite well.”

It is then you see the walls begin to drop, eye dart…and know.

A person who can’t hear will yell, “What did you say?”  As if you were the one with the problem.

A person who can’t see well will develop a sense of touch and smell that helps to compensate.

I was looking at it all wrong.  

While everyone else understands how to dress up their words, he is still the word worker.  

Some people mask uncertainty concretely.  Other’s run away from it.  We both have a problem. 

The difference between continually running into someone else’s wall, or continually blaming yourself for the fact it’s there is understanding that every person is a language.

When words are his building blocks, but her window, it’s better to stop trying to hammer through the wall he’s built.   

To put it into context:  It takes time to speak the marriage language. 

I look through my window to the world with others who can appreciate the view. He discusses the bricks and mortar with others who appreciate his hands-on approach.  Together, we’ve both created a whole structure. 

We simply enjoy its beauty differently.

©Joelle (sometimes it takes a few mistakes to get it right) LeGendre.