Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The evening nap. One of the most diabolical inventions wrought by humanity, technically available to all, arguably beneficial to none, and it’s something I narrowly avoided just now. It’s one of those things that seems like a good idea. Clearly your body wants to recuperate, and a little shut-eye wouldn’t hurt, right? But once you take that evening nap–presumably to rest up for the impending eight hours of slumber–you’re guaranteed to ruin your sleep cycle.

I was close. So close. But as I started dozing off, mere minutes away from sweet oblivion, I snapped back to reality. There was blogging to be done, and if there’s one thing that can drag me back into the waking world, it’s the prospect of depositing roughly 300 to 450 words into WordPress twice a week. Tonight, we’re going to talk about talking. Dizzy enough? Good.

One unintentional benefit of being more sociable is a heightened sense of conversation, specifically conversational options. At the end of the day, the actual content of a discussion is only part of the story–there’s something to be said, too, about how speech unfolds and its ability to alter the general mood. For some discussions, I can “see” a few possible replies before me, during the discussion itself. There will be three, four possible things to say that flash across my mind: a subdued, more agreeable response on the right side of this imaginary spectrum, and a bluntly offensive one on the left side, with one or two in between. You’d think the offensive choice would be off-limits, but it can be used to get a laugh.

In geek terms, this is almost like a dialogue menu in computer games. Remember King’s Quest? Yeah, something like that. Now, this doesn’t happen for every conversation–that would be a one-way ticket to clinical insanity–but in the instances where it does occur, it’s a rush. It’s thrilling to be able to alter the flow of talk, and when people fundamentally want to talk about themselves, it’s a way to enrich the texture of a conversation. The talk will naturally come to a close, though, and when that moment comes, it’s time to bow out, call it a day. Kinda like what I’m going to do now.