Faux Pas of the mind
My ability to put my foot in my mouth in times of extreme stress is sometimes quite staggering. At least now, in middle age, I am aware of my abilities and try to keep them in check...
I bought some Lego for a little occupational therapy (why should Alexander have all the fun). I thought fiddling with it now and then, in my little cube in corporate hamsterville, would feel good.
Heather is back at work, and stopped by my cube to ask about some "stuff" I wanted to put back in stock. Our conversation remained light and professional around "the stuff", the noise levels in cube land and the general experience of working here. Half of my brain parsed and reparsed each sentence before speaking it to make sure I didn't say anything wrong, whilst the other half fought the screaming urge to break down and tell her how terribly sad I was that she had lost her husband.
The conversation time passed and I felt relief that this time I hadn't inadvertently said anything insensitive or hurtful. I rebooted my PC for the umpteenth time and fiddled with the Lego while I waited. I made a phone call and fiddled on. Then I looked down at my creation- I had made a fire truck.
posted by Rod @ 11:59 PM
1 Comments:
Very moving. A friend of mine died recently. He was one of the loveliest people that I have ever met but also had an enormous amount of tragedy to cope with. I missed the funeral because I was in San Francisco. His friends and family set up a web site and recorded their thoughts and memories there.
I made the mistake of looking at it at work. As the tears welled up, I got a 'phone call. I couldn't really deal with the contrast between the words that I was saying and hearing and the feelings that I was having. I had to go for a walk.
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