9th
Talking At People
A lot of times I have conversations with people where we’re not so much conversing as we are talking at each other. It often goes like this. John thinks X, but that everyone else has it wrong and thinks Y. Bob says Z, which sounds like Y, and John excitedly jumps on the opportunity to explain to Bob his common misconception. Now, Bob really just wanted to talk about how funny Knocked Up was, but X, which John is now talking about, sounds a lot like Q and Bob thinks that everyone who thinks Q has it wrong and should really be thinking V. So now Bob starts yelling at John about V. So to recap, Bob just wanted to talk about how hot Katherine Heigl is, but now John is talking about X and Bob is talking about V, but they’re not really even talking about X and V, they’re talking about !Y and !Q, and it’s quite possible that there’s no connection between the two (i.e. if X != Q) and that there was no reason to get into the argument in the first place (i.e. if Z != Y).
