Today the cleaners were arguing about which ocean Atlantis might have been in. I had stayed late to do some work on the JavaScript course I’m learning, and I couldn’t help overhearing George The Cleaner furiously explain how if you “take off the S” and “replace it with a C”, you get the answer “obviously” spelled out for you.
The other cleaners thought he was somehow talking about how Atlantis sank into the ‘sea’ ... and confusion burbled over the clinking plates and the vacuum cleaner. George looked puzzled.
I am not poking fun at the cleaners by the way. Today, in a meeting, I accidentally started a silly debate about whether ‘check box’ is one word or two. I was adamant that Microsoft specified it as two words, but the rest of the team weren’t convinced.
And don’t get me started on ‘which versus that’ or occasions for use of the Oxford Comma! I suspect the cleaners would have found that kind of discussion just as bizarre.
I was surprisingly vocal about the check box thing! I interrupted Erica mid-sentence at one point and chipped in. I hate it when I do that; it feels as though I’m somehow being misogynistic, but in a terrible subconscious way that might be hardwired without me realising. I resolved that I would listen carefully to the rest of the discussion and stop interjecting, just in case. Wait for a space.
There are times though, aren’t there, when that space never arrives! Brains move faster than sentences, and before Person X has finished her thought, Person Y has started to think through theirs. Person Z has not been listening, and is about to repeat what Person W said ten minutes ago as though it’s a brand new zinger. Meanwhile, there are no full stops in sight, no breathers to pause and ponder. We race on at a hundred miles per hour.
Nope, I’ve never known what to do with that situation. Jump in? Tricky. Wait? Infuriating. Listen? Patience-testing. Also, my brain seems to circle around things that are peculiarly eccentric to the conversation, and would help entirely nobody. Sometimes just because something is true, it doesn’t make it relevant.
There was no way I was launching into the Atlantis conversation! Yes, I think Plato made it up, yes I think the idea of a mysterious and mythical threat from across the unknown sea is at best a nifty literary device, and at worst a political construct for greasing Athenian minds to war and Republic. And yes I think the mythology of the place got out of hand in the same way that humans in the year 4000 might argue over whether Hogwarts existed. And yes, if it’s anywhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules, then Atlantis would have been ... in the Atlantic. But there was no way I was going to say all that without warning, to George The Cleaner!
Nope. Probably best if I stick to check boxes.
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