ʃ Sharing a Ride ʅ
Ed Klima invited me to attend a meeting over at the Salk Institute, suggesting to me, “Maybe we could share a ride back to campus.” Now, Salk wasn’t all that far away, and I could easily have walked back, but hey, a ride’s a ride, so I said it sounded like a fine idea.
Fast forward until right after the meeting. Ed was chatting with some of the Salk researchers, so I started talking with my friend Karen. She told me I should use “deficit” instead of “debit” as an antonym for “benefit.” Linguists… sheesh.
I kept looking over at Ed to make sure that I would be ready to go whenever he was, and he kept looking back at me like, “I’ll be done in a sec, and then we’ll go.” No problem… the guy with the car calls the shots, right? Besides, I wasn’t in any hurry, and I figured that I could always walk. So I kept on talking.
He finally walked over and said that we’d better get going so he wouldn’t be late for his next class. We headed straight out the door and walked along the building towards the parking lot, side by side.
As we got closer to the curb, I slowed my pace so I could follow him out to his car, and I noticed that he was also slowing down. I’m thinking, “He’s trying to remember where he parked.” But it wasn’t all that big a parking lot. Did he forget something inside? So I slowed down a little bit more.
Just like he did.
Which is how we ended up slowly grinding to a scuffling halt.
There’s this neat little thing called “dawning realization.” It’s like a slow-motion surprise. Insight infuses the face: the jaw drops, the eyebrows go up, and you hear a long vowel, usually something along the lines of “Ah…” or “Oh…” (and sometimes “Why”).
“Ah…” said Ed.
“Oh…” I agreed.
Then we began to snicker like a couple of idiots.
Just in case I’m being obscure, let me give you a little behind-the-scenes peek at how this works in a couple of highly-trained, complex, cognitive-linguist-type brains:
Ed’s brain: “Ah… he was planning to walk, not drive, so he thought that I was offering a ride, when I was asking for one.”
My brain: “Oh… he thought that I was going to drive, not walk, so he was asking for a ride, not offering one… sheesh.”
There was no option left but to feel kind of stupid, and laugh.
And I was very, very relieved that he was laughing.
Of course, when it comes right down to it, I didn’t have to worry that he would miss the humor in the absurd situation. First, he’s just a hell of a nice guy. Second, he knows all about how this sort of confusion occurs. I won’t bore you with the details, but people work from sets of assumptions that are far more different from person to person than they think they are. Plus you have to factor in goofiness. In fact, it’s amazing that people communicate as well as they do. As my dad says, “Communication isn’t difficult; it’s impossible.”
But don’t worry. Ed wasn’t late to his next class; he managed to get a ride back from Ursula Bellugi.