Don’t you hate it when you are having a perfectly normal conversation and then suddenly you have no idea what happened?
This morning, for example, I walked into a store and the very nice store manager behind the front counter said, ”Hello!” with a cheerful smile. In return, I gave a quick (but more restrained) “Hello,” and a manly head nod.
And then, this happened.
“How are you today honey?” she said.
This threw me for a loop and my mind started racing.
“How often do I come in here to buy junk food? Am I really in a ‘honey’ friendship with this person now? She’s never called me Honey before, is she making fun of me for buying so many Honey Buns? Should I give her a nickname? Sweetie? Should I say, ‘I’m great darlin’ how’s life on the cool side of the street?’’ What does that mean? What if people hear her calling me honey? Wait a minute, there’s there’s a friend of mine standing in line near the front counter. I hope she didn’t hear that. What must she think?”
My inner monologue was (thankfully) cut short when my friend in line turned to me said with a smile, “I’m the honey.”
“Ohhhh,” I Iied to her, “that’s what I thought.” And that’s when finally I realized that the store manager had been talking to my friend the whole time.
I had a mix of emotions as I was still a little confused, but also embarrassed, relieved, a little disappointed and in great need of a Honey Bun.
Earlier in the week, a somewhat similar thing happened when I ran into a friend of mine who has two sons around the same age as my son Ben.
I asked her about one of her sons and then she asked me about Ben and what he is studying in college.
It was a very nice and normal conversation, but then it took a turn for the confusing.
“And he’s with the football team,” she said to me. I was impressed that she knew that Ben was a manager with one of the college teams, but I wanted to quickly correct her.
“That’s right, but he’s with the basketball team,” I said.
“That’s nice, and he is with the football team,” she replied.
“No, Ben is just with the basketball team, but he really enjoys it,” I said.
“And he just loves football,” she replied.
“Sure, but basketball is Ben’s favorite and that’s why he works with the basketball team but not the football team.”
By this time, I was getting a little frustrated with the whole conversation and was wondering why she couldn’t understand what I meant. How could she not know the difference between football and basketball? One of her sons even played football in high school!
“Oh yeah,” I said out loud as I finally remembered that the son I had forgotten to ask about is named “Andy,” and she has been taking about him the whole time I thought she had said “and he.”
“That’s great! And he’s a great kid, well I better get going,” I said and left quite embarrassed and once again looking for a Honey Bun.
Also recently, I tried out a new (to me) barbershop. The barber seemed very nice, but when he was finished he said something confusing about my hair being short. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I didn’t think too much about it because I was too busy admiring myself in the mirror and obsessing over what the appropriate tip amount is for a barber.
When I got home later that day and greeted my wife, (“Greetings wife!”) she said to me, “Hey, I like your haircut a lot.”
“Thanks,” I said and turned to walk away to admire my haircut once again.
“But what happened to the back of your head?” she said. She pointed out that it was rather uneven and spotty in the back, and that’s when I thought a little more about the quick conversation I had with the barber when I left the shop.
“It will grow in and even out in the next few days,” he had said to me.
“So that’s what that meant,” I thought. “I knew I tipped him too much.”
Finally, I even had a similar type experience when I got my new phone after my old phone broke (again grrr!).
When I my new phone arrived, the box had directions in it about how to send my old phone back. I didn’t think much about it at first, but when I read the direction again at home, I realized how absurd one of the messages was.
In very large print it said, and I swear this is true:
“Attention Customer: If you have Samsung Note 7, do not ship the device to AT&T. Power off the device and store it until further notice.”
So basically, if your phone breaks for any reason, you have to go to the trouble to pack it up and send it back to them, unless it just happens to be one of the phones that catches on fire suddenly for no reason. If that’s the case, the company doesn’t want those phones, but insists that you store them in your own home!
I feel like calling them up and saying, “Listen honey, I am sending you this phone back whether you like it or not! It will cool off in a few days.”
“And he loves football.”
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