One Angry Monkey

I’d never realised how socially awkward I am until today. I mean, I knew I was socially awkward but the full extent of it escaped me. I got a phone call from the Matriarch to inform me of the sad passing of Young Boobs’ beloved puppy. She suggested I should email Young Boobs to pass on my sympathies. When the Matriarch says “jump” you’d better not waste time asking “how high?” so as soon as I got off the phone I cranked up the old email (that fat hamster got a workout and all, my email doesn’t see much use).

I stared at the screen. “Hey sis,” I typed. No, too casual. “Hi.” Too terse. “Greetings?” I’m not a f$#king Vulcan.

I thought to myself, what do you say to a person whose dog just died? “You have my deepest sympathies”? That’s a little melodramatic. “Sorry your dog died”? I’m not renowned for my tact but even I know that’s not what you say. “May the Lord watch over you in your time of grief”? Now that’s just taking the piss.

I thought about it. Should I try and cheer her up by telling her about my underlay misadventure? I mean who doesn’t want to hear about my pathological inability to think things through properly while they’re grieving? Should I tell her a tale of inspiration and hope, like my plans for study next year? Probably not a good idea. An e-card playing that Celine Dion song from Titanic seems like a combination of the two - a bad idea born of my pathological inability to think things through. The veto department is apparently back online, folks, and now I’m just waiting to hear what the demands I unconditionally acquiesced to were.

It quickly became clear to me that the more I wrote the deeper the hole I dug myself. I hit the backspace until it pleaded for mercy, because my backspace button does that you know, and replaced my flowery yet tactless speech with a single line, that I’d heard, was sorry and hoped she was okay.

Brevity is the soul of sincerity too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.