Or, the life lesson I have failed to learn
This is what happens 15 seconds after I hit post.
By now, any regular reader of my blogs, posts, status updates, tweets, emails and IMs knows that I’m not so much a writer as I am a blurter. As soon as a thought hits my head, it’s on the screen and without so much as a quick once over I’m hitting that send key as if it were a little mole at a funfair. On those occassions when I do remember to make an effort it seems that until it’s out there in the world, I still read it exactly as I heard it in my head and not the words and punctuation that appear on the screen. This can lead to not a small amount of embarrassment.
Take this exchange between me and my friend Tumblemoose, aka George. It’s all the more embarrassing because not two weeks ago I’d read his post Write, write, rewrite and promised to myself that I would take his advice to slow the heck down. It begins innocently enough with this tweet:
Just one typo! I am proud of me!
To which George replies in a way sure to get my attention as it involves canned meat:
And indeed, I need to get myself one of those canned chickens!
So, you know, I have to let him know that I’m not intimidated by him and his fancy entire chicken in a can and that I am a serious contender:
Of/Off is an easy mistake to make. Plus, you only get 140 characters so I think I get a pass for leaving off a redundant f.
He seems suitably impressed by me, no?
I am too much! If only everyone knew that about me, I
Now, I can’t just accept a compliment like that, I have to let the giver know that they were super right to give it. I call that adding value by acknowledging and re-enforcing their rightness in admiring me:
Oops, that came out wrong
Okay, you see the problem with that right? What I was trying to say was “Ha! Aren’t you right! I’m so too much my own husband gives me odd canned foodstuffs instead of crap from Jarrods for my birthday. Am I not a hoot?” And the I am a lady was a play on not accepting valuable gifts, in this case canned puddings, from men not related to one’s self. But instead it sounded kind of pervy and to remedy it I sent this:
Nope, still missing the mark!
Which, um, yeah, does nothing to mitigate the “dick” part of that last tweet and George, he seems like a gentleman and not the kind of guy that would appreciate such shenanigans coming from a married mother of five so I fire off one last tweet:
I just do not know when to leave well enough alone.
And of course at 12.11 am I think to myself, you know George being the nice guy he is probably didn’t think I was trying to be a Twitter hussy with my first tweet and I just made myself look really stupid by not remembering very important life lesson #3 “If you can get away with walking away from a fart and pretending you didn’t notice, do it!” (Obviously that lesson can be very broadly applied) All’s well that ends well though, since the next morning I found this:
What a nice guy!
And me being me, I replied:
Eep! Back into dangerous waters! Abort! Abort!
But this time I was smart and left it all alone. I guess the problem is I’m so used to posting on a board with mostly women I sometimes forget my manners in mixed company. Not that George is easily mistaken for a woman. Although it wouldn’t be bad if he were because it’s good to be a woman, just as good as a man, which is what he is. And I talk to men just like women, except less jokes about porn because that’s not appropriate. But if you want to do that, it’s okay, it’s just my husband and I have these boundaries because he really loves me. Not that your husband doesn’t love you, it’s just my husband thinks I’m desirable. And I’m going to give up writing this now and tomorrow this conversation will have never happened.
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