Do you want to go out with me?
Simple to understand, yes? No.
———-
A year ago, I visited beautiful Atlanta, Georgia for a Christian summit called the Orange Conference. Like most of these conferences, I learned a great deal about ministry and filled up my suffer-struggle-survive-excel-and-be-more-than-a-conqueror-emotional-bank. We pastors quite often need to recharge in that area. Well, at this conference, I learned a valuable lesson that goes beyond spiritual matters.
I sat in a giant hall for a seminar with a communications specialist. I forget his name and his job title. But I remember he was an advisor for one of the recent presidents of the US as well as a PR specialist for famous athletes and celebrities.
And here’s the lesson I learned from him.
Avoid having serious discussions of any kind via email, text, instant messaging.
And why? Simply because you can’t read tone in typeface and font.
It’s the reason why I overuse lol and =). I’m secretly afraid that if I don’t use them, someone may think me angry, an insensitive, cold and calloused, hateful ogre-ish person. So, I lol even though I rarely, if ever actually lol.
I’ve even been accused of being annoyed, bad-tempered, crabby, all the way to zoned-out over the phone when in actuality, I’ve considered myself to be pleasant and engaged in a conversation.
I’ve been told my multiple sources that I always sound sarcastic. And funny as it seems at first, it wears thin when trying to flirt/compliment/express heartfelt emotion with the opposite sex. I shudder to think what my wife will think on our wedding day when I pour my heart out in my vows. She may slap me in the face!
So, I’ve taken Mister-I-was-an-aid-to-president-whos-a-whats-it’s advice. Because if people can’t understand my mood over the phone, or think I’m being sarcastic, typed communication will most likely turn out to be typed mis-communication.
And maybe you don’t believe me about this whole “tone” thing. Well, let me tell you a story. It’s a true story, happened to a friend and another friend of mine. (Freaky Stories reference. If you got it, bonus points.)
———-
late night MSN conversation
mindless chit-chat…
conversation shifts to serious talk…
topic of dating and relationships is broached…
Girl asks Boy, “Do you think dating relationships can blossom out of friendships?
Boy responds to Girl, “Do you want to go out with me?”
Girl says, “Yes.”
Boy, shocked and confused, “What?”
For Girl, this was her way of letting Boy know that she liked him, by throwing a “feeler” question out there to him. For Boy, who was oblivious to her feelings, asked, “Do you want to go out with me?” not to ask her out (like most would think), but to emphasize his belief that friendships would never turn into dating relationships. Read it like this, “No, that would never happen…(would) you want to go out with me??” It was intended to be a sarcastic hyperbole implying that friends would never become lovers.
But sadly… it wasn’t taken like that by Girl. It led to awkward greetings between them and the eventual banishment of Girl from our regular get-togethers for a while. We actually had no idea why she stopped hanging out with us until much later when Boy told us what had happened.
The story immediately went into our friendship folklore and is routinely brought up in jest. Anytime Boy gets too big for his britches, we simply ask…
“Do YOU want to go out with me?”
LOL.
=).
ROFL (and all other visual cues that I’m happy right now)
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