Subject: Communications Gap

By Brent E. McCoy

Have you ever been sitting in your favorite chair, relaxing after a hard day, when in rushes one of your teenaged kids and rattles off the longest single word ever spoken by a human being?

There I was enjoying a few minutes of peace, when in rushed my daughter, Katie, and without taking a breath, tries to explain the day’s events to me. I saw her mouth moving, I heard sounds but it made no sense - justonelongneverendingword, punctuated only with the sound of "like" every six or seven syllables. My head went numb; I became dizzy, and started to develop a headache. My first thought was "Oh, no, I’m having a stroke!" In a desperate attempt to save my life, I asked her to repeat what she had just said; only this time I asked her to go slower and to separate all of the words. This was much better. As the color returned to my face, I realized that we might have a communications gap in the family.

I often wonder if the kids know what they are going to say before it comes out of their mouths. Or, are they just as surprised as the rest of us when they hear it?

I explained that it would be much better if she would speak in a manner that would allow others to better understand what she was trying to say and that way there would be fewer misunderstandings. I said, "Now wouldn’t that be better for everyone?" She said, "Yeah, that would be tight". Tight? I asked what she meant by tight. My daughter explained, slowly so that I could understand, that "Tight is like, um, really good". I was so glad we had the earlier conversation.

We both agreed to work on our communication skills.

Because she had recently hurt her wrist, Katie asked me if I would tie her shoe for her. When I finished, she said, "Dad that’s really tight". I said, "Thanks honey, but it’s only a bow". Then she said, "No, dad it’s tight, it hurts my feet". With that, she excused herself and muttered something about going to ask her mother what a stroke feels like.

I overheard someone the other day in the market complaining that the schools spend too much time on so called "Language" when they should be teaching our kids to speak clearly and use words the way they were meant to be used. After what I just went through, I’m inclined to agree.

If the way we were taught was good enough for us it should be good enough for them. And think of it, if our kids would learn to speak the way we were taught to speak, we would all be able to understand each other much better.

Now wouldn’t that be a trip. Life would be so far out and then we could all groove together… Dude.