What’s That You Said?
It’s play time again at our house — Homeschool Dramatic Society play time that is. This is the 18th time I have had the blessing of assisting our daughter Mary Evelyn in what began as a homeschool project in 1999.
“Mom, can I write a play and ask homeschoolers to be in it?”
“Sure, Mary Evelyn. That will be English right now.”
She was fifteen then. Now she is the mother of three. Then the cast was 22. This one has 118.
Play time means paint and brushes, thread and fabric, phone calls and emails — lots of emails. My assignment on Tuesday morning was to go to the local hardware store for green paint, green for grass and leaves and such. To my surprise, I found an appropriate chip right away (that is NOT my usual paint-choosing style).
It turns out that on that busy morning, it was easier to find the perfect color than to find someone to mix it. I asked the owner if he was by himself. He smiled and said, “It looks like it, don’t it?” before hurrying off on some urgent matter.
Soon I found a young clerk I hadn’t met before and showed him the specific chip I wanted on the strip of green ones. He underlined #7606 and folded the strip so that that one chip stood out alone.
I don’t mix paint, he told me, as he hurried off to another task.
Soon a clerk I’ve known for years and who does mix paint came to my rescue, grabbed the chip, and started mixing. Finished, he carried the can to the check-out for me.
I paid and hurried to Mary Evelyn and the backdrop. Then I popped open the gallon of pale mint green paint! Oh, no!
Back to the hardware store. I showed the paint-mixing clerk my paint chip strip, still folded and underlined, but we both also saw the communication breakdown. You see, around the corner and two spaces down on the green paint chip strip was pale mint color 7608, marked for a previous customer.
I had communicated to Clerk #1 with words. Clerk #1 had communicated in his underlining, folding, lay-it-on-the-counter sort of way to Clerk #2 who didn’t even notice Clerk #1’s communication. All Clerk #2 saw was a previous communication from some other day.
Clerk #2 mixed me up a new gallon of 7606 and put 7608 on the floor in a front window, along with some other paint cans. Mint green is a pretty popular color, he told me. Somebody else might want it sometime.
Verbal communication is one of the characteristics of being human, but all kinds of things can make it a challenge. It’s pretty obvious that someone who speaks only English won’t understand someone who speaks only Bogpoori (I looked for something exotic; Bogpoori is spoken by 12% of the islanders of Mauritius).
Sometimes the meaning is far from obvious when someone who speaks only “wife” tries to understand someone who speaks only “husband” or when someone who speaks only parent tries to understand someone who speaks only teen or when someone speaks only loud and their conversation partner speaks only soft.
Families work best when every member listens patiently in the language that every member speaks, while realizing that not a single family member speaks and listens in exactly the same way as another.
When we put a puzzle together, we turn each piece this way and that way until we find what fits together. Sometimes communication is very much like a puzzle.
Every good thing given
and every perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights,
with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
In the exercise of His will
He brought us forth by the word of truth,
so that we would be
a kind of first fruits among His creatures.
This you know, my beloved brethren.
But everyone must be quick to hear,
slow to speak and slow to anger;
for the anger of man
does not achieve the righteousness of God.
James 1:17-20Â