A little misunderstanding

Today is not only Thursday, mis amigos. Oh no, it is much more than that. Today will turn into tonight, and tonight is the first night of my new bowling league. How rad is that? That's right, "rad." I keep meaning to bring "tubular" back, but then I pass over it for words like "ridunkulous" or Dave's creation, "retardiculous." I'm actually a little nervous about bowling because I just got a new ball, and I used it for the first time yesterday and ripped a nice piece of skin off my thumb. Wish me luck. Thank you.

This week's super unofficial theme has been "problems in communication." At least the last two days have been about that. Well today is no different. I have two other tales in that family of thought, and they have every right to be heard. Isn't that what America's all about anyway?

Here we go. I'll call story one "The Channels." Good title, eh? I've known my friend Greg my entire life because our parents were friends before we were born. While there are countless benefits to that kind of closeness, there are some interesting side effects. Here's an example: During our freshman year at UCSB, neither of us had a car there with us. My lovely girlfriend (who was promoted years later to lovely wife status) did though, and being from around the same place as us, gave us rides down to L.A. every once in a while. One Friday morning, I told Greg the following: "Amber may want to leave a little earlier today if she can get a haircut appointment in L.A., so just make sure you're ready." An hour later, I had a message on my answering machine from my mom. She said, "I just talked to Roberta. You're not coming down now this weekend because Amber has a doctor's appointment in Santa Barbara? Call me." The message had gone through the channels, and that was the result.

Normally, the game of Telephone only works when there are many people involved and the message is easily confused. That's what was weird about the above situation; there were only four of us involved and two were aware of the real message. This has happened many times, and Greg and I always laugh as we decode what the other probably said to his respective mom. The other interesting thing about the channels besides the mixing of messages is in the blistering speed in which news travels. When Greg was getting his results after taking the California Bar, I was waiting anxiously with my phone in my hand. It rang, and I quickly answered to find that it was my mom and not Greg. "Oh, I was hoping you'd be Greg," I said. "Oh, he passed; he didn't call you yet?" "That's great! No, he - oh wait, he's calling on the other line." I hung up and got the other line. "Congratulations, man!" I said. "What? Thanks. How did you know?" he asked. I told him that my mom just told me, and he was very confused because he had just told his mom 30 seconds before. In that brief window, she had called my mom and my mom called me. They're crazy fast with that stuff.

It's not a perfect science by any means. I remember hearing one day that a relative of Greg's had gone to the hospital in the middle of the previous night, and I called him to see if there was any news. The only news was that he hadn't heard a single thing about it yet, and he was pissed off at his parents for not telling him. Oops. I can understand why he was upset; after all, he majored in Communication.

The second story in the "problems in communication" series is from about a year and a half ago. Through my work, I was at a premier of sorts for a movie at a film festival. I was sitting with two gentlemen who happened to be a couple, and we were chatting about all sorts of stuff. None of us had any idea what the movie we were about to see would be like, and that dominated our conversation. One of them brought up Jake Gyllenhaal somehow, and I smiled and nodded. The other then said something to me that sounded like, "To see the movie..." I said, "Yeah..." as I waited for the rest of the sentence. "What did you think of it?" he asked. I then realized that he was asking "Did you see the movie?" and that "the movie" was "Brokeback Mountain."

The right thing for me to say in that moment was, "Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. No, I haven't seen 'Brokeback Mountain' yet but I've heard good things about it. Have you seen it?" Instead though, for reasons still unbeknownst to me, I said, "Loved it." "Really!" he said, excited by my response. "Oh yeah," I said, "The acting, the cinematography - all of it was just so well done." Meanwhile, the only thing I kept thinking was, "Please don't ask me any specifics. Please don't ask me any specifics." His next question was probably predictable: "Can I ask: are you straight?" "Straight? Yes, me? Yes, I'm straight." "And you loved it?" he asked. "I can appreciate a well-done film regardless of the subject matter," I said. I quickly tried shifting to other gay and lesbian movies I've seen, throwing out any and everything I could in hopes that one would stick. One did for a minute ("My Beautiful Launderette" with Daniel Day-Lewis), and then the movie mercifully started and my blood pressure went back to normal.

That one was all my doing, and I have no excuse for my decision to lie about the movie. It would've been so horrible to have to admit that I hadn't seen it a few minutes into the conversation that I get a pit in my stomach just thinking about it. Oh well, live and learn. The moral of today's story: Only admit to loving something once you actually know what it is. Stick to that, and you'll be ok out there, kiddo. See you tomorrow for another FUF piece. Please send your every whim to ptklein@gmail.com, and I'll greet the emails with a smile. I have a nice smile, so you really should consider it.