Don’t Ask if You Don’t Want Me to Answer!

My mother taught me well, for the most part. I would probably sink like a rock in the echelons of debutantes and cotillions; the finer distinctions of hoity toity society grace are beyond my comprehension. But basic social graces in the relaxed California sunshine, I have down pat.

Certain responses are automatic and ingrained. When someone gives me a compliment, I say thank you and leave it at that; even if they are telling me they love my shirt and it’s horrible, or that my kid is cute and I am ready to throttle them. When someone asks how my day is, even if it is horrific I say, “fine, thank you, and yours?” That kind of thing.

It doesn’t take any thought to do that. More complicated situations require more thought; I can usually do the right thing, given a second or two to filter through my head what it is I should be saying. Questions like, “What do you think about the President?” for example, or “What are your thoughts on NAFTA?”, or “Should I have a baby shower for my second kid?” Controversial stuff. I’m rarely at a loss for words, but my natural inclination to just say the unfiltered truth does on occasion need to be sorted through a filter depending on who is asking the question and whether I am supposed to be making congenial small talk, or having an actual discussion.

The filter works nicely, honed through years of tweaking responses to clients who are looking for, in various amounts, reassurance, truthful opinions, false hope, etc. It takes but a moment to read your audience and slant your response for optimum efficacy. This is called “people skills” by those who make a lot of money selling long winded self help bibles, but really, it all boils down to basic social grace and skill and isn’t *that* hard a concept to master.

Which is why it was a bit unsettling to learn today that chronic sleep deprivation coupled with illness can poke beach ball size holes in what you thought was a fairly sturdy filter. Today, I was at Starbucks grabbing a quick latte with my 6 month old. A couple saw us and obviously were smitten with my son.

What they didn’t know was that in the past week I have gotten no more than 3 hours of sleep a night; everyone in the household is laid flat with a cold, cranky and overall having a bad week. I had to run to Target to get cold medicine for my husband, and I took my son in an unsucessful attempt to lure him into a nap. The trip to Target was a nightmare, as he refused to sit in the cart and I had to drag his large 20 pound self all over the store before realizing sudafed was no longer carried there, and hoping my husband wouldn’t read the NyQuil label too carefully. I attempted the Starbucks drive through but the line was 10 cars deep and the baby was screaming, so I got out and went inside, only to have the cash register break and an extra 10 minute delay with the ten ton weight on my hip.

So when the nice couple said, “Can we have your son?” after observing his uncharacteristicly cheerful attitude for the first time in a week or so, instead of applying the General Response Filter which would have processed:

comment- not real question; rhetorical

question = compliment in question disguise

apply compliment response

My brain misfired, read their question as an actual question, and responded with an emphatic “YES you can! Here!” while holding him out.

Their smiles turned into a confused frown, replaced by horror, and then they quickly turned back to their newspapers and studiously ignored me. I guess that was the wrong response. I suppose they shouldn’t have asked the question if they didn’t want to hear my answer, but I was a little overly enthusiastic, I suppose. I spent the next uncomfortable 5 minutes waiting for my drink, bouncing the baby overattentively and making him giggle to prove that yes, I was actually a decent mother and no, please don’t call CPS on the woman trying to barter her kid off at the Starbucks.

-jesvet