Some years ago I sat on the grass in a park with fellow CELTA students. We each ate our lunch. Despite the shared aim of becoming English language teachers, I doubt it’s possible to meet a more diverse group of people. Nevertheless, there we all were, thrown together for a very intense month, and there we sat on the grass, not making much in the way of conversation. Real conversation tended to happen after hours in the pub. This was in London. (I learned that this is the English way.)
We were nonetheless civil to each other. A lull in lunchtime conversation didn’t mean much. And then I broke the silence by asking a classmate called Jenny a question about her lunch. Something about what was in her sandwich. Or similar. Honestly, I don’t remember what I asked her. What I do remember is that she looked at me with totally unexpected horror.
“Did you just ask me how much I weigh?” she said, obviously angry. I had snapped her out of some sort of reverie.
“No,” I continued, unperturbed at the time. “I said what’s that in your sandwich.”
“Oh.” She told me what was in her sandwich and things proceeded normally after that. Except they didn’t. From then on, things felt slightly off-kilter.
You see, I’m not convinced she was convinced that I hadn’t asked her how much she weighed.
In turn, I was slightly offended that she would even think I might ask something like that. Anyone who knows me at all would understand that’s not a question I would ask.
The course ended, we friended each other on Facebook, and about a year later I was having a social media cleanout so I unfriended Jenny. When I thought of her, I thought of us sitting in Kensington Park that fine day, misunderstanding each other. Sure, there were other things that weren’t quite right between us, but I have since wondered how often in life our memories and impressions of people are founded on an imaginary versions of events; on things misheard, on conversations wholly imagined, inadvertently turned into memories.
I wonder how often we are misheard or misunderstood and are never even told about it.
Anyway, I still think of Jenny whenever that specific kind of miscommunication occurs.
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