Brwm, brwm; beep, beep.

Communication is important.  Thought I’d start with a concise statement there so as not to be misconstrued.  Since communication is important it is equally important that the communication that you are undertaking is clear, or as clear as you can make it, so as not to be misconstrued.  Repetition can achieve this, although it can also make you look simple, and bore anyone reading, which is bad for communication.

Being misunderstood is one thing which frustrates me.  It frustrates me even more so if the person doing the misunderstanding is doing it wilfully.  There’s nothing which annoys me quite as much as someone trying to annoy me.  Which, in and of itself, is annoying.

Having been ‘the loud one’ for a portion of my life, I have been purposefully attempting to be softer and quieter when speaking, so as to salvage some dignity for myself, in the lieu of my childhood which I spent headbutting tables and dribbling water down myself for laughs (my own).  Rather than seeming dignified and considered, I come across as timid and people often can’t hear.  This is frustrating.

After spending time attempting to develop a more restrained and considered pattern of speaking and an, often needlessly, colourful way of writing, it is testing to be in a position where communication is in some way hampered.

Driving to work every day, there is an awkward junction which, since a new bypass was completed, has become a sticking point.  There are two sets of traffic lights side by side, one which directs traffic straight on and to the right, and another which directs traffic to the left.  I take the left, and often the left turn is green whilst the other is red, no problem.  However, the lights are situated on the crest of a hill, and so at the time of day I drive in, the sun is directly behind them, blinding sight and obscuring the colours from view.  Also, when the straight on light turns green, the light on the other set disappears completely.  These events mean that often someone stops at the lights when they should be driving on, causing a queue on a very steep hill, usually involving a bus, or a number of buses (the bus, of course, my nemesis).

I did this once, soon after the road had been completed, and when I stopped, uncertain as to whether or not I would be ploughed into should I drive on, a man I would describe as ‘very angry’ started beeping repeatedly and furiously at me, gurning like a beleaguered lobster, or a put-upon bichon frise.  I was quite stressed out by his aural attack, and decided that I wouldn’t subject someone to such a thing myself.

For three days in a row this week I have had to stop behind people who aren’t familiar with the quirks of the lights.  It is at that point that I realised fully just how limited the options available to car-based interaction are.  A beep of ‘hey, you can go’ is the exact same beep of ‘come on you tool, go!’  I feel bad after beeping, so I force myself to smile demurely afterwards, so at the very least any rear-view mirror interaction will dispel any suspicions of dickishness.

Recently, I had cause to remove some children from the premises where I work, and when challenged for a reason, I explained they were being punished for being “obnoxious”.  Now, with the information offered to me by 21^st Century super-magic ‘the internet’, I can offer that this word means ‘extremely unpleasant, very annoying or objectionable; offensive or odious’.  All that took was typing the word ‘obnoxious’ into a search bar embedded in an internet browser.  Children, however, are tediously devoid of resourcefulness when they decide to be.  They declared, as a group, that they didn’t understand the word ‘obnoxious’.  Given that I had invested quite a lot of my initial reasoning on the word ‘obnoxious’, I found their lack of vocabulambition, ironically, obnoxious.  Throwing them out for being ‘rude’ doesn’t have quite the same impact.  Makes me look like a screeching oldyn tymes Governess.  ‘Bad attitude’ makes them into Fonz-like dudes who are fighting the man.  My ad-libabilities are lacking still, I could only stretch to “whatever, just get out”.

Kids and cars.  Bastards.