Why Don't People Just Say What They Mean?

Thoroughly bewildered yet terribly frustrated, my husband asked a question that embarrassed me. How many times had I shamed him. How many times had I, like his friend, humiliated him by my arrogance?

Bruce has aphasia. "The word aphasia describes an impairment of the ability to communicate, not an impairment of intellect." (National Aphasia Association)

Bruce's version of aphasia includes difficulty in comprehending verbal and written language. He struggles to find meaning in many of the simplest words. He especially struggles to comprehend the "hidden meanings" when people speak in sarcasm, implication, innuendo, intimations, etc.

Yesterday morning he picked up the phone at 6:30 in the morning and began to dial a near and dear friend of his.

I asked him to reconsider placing that phone call.

"WHY?"

I reminded him that his friend had been telling him repeatedly that he did not appreciate the early morning phone calls.

My husband asked, "When did he do that? I never heard him say that."

I replied that his friend had been making snide remarks about it every time we had been with him since his retirement.

I thought for a moment and realized that our friend had never said, "I don't like early morning phone calls. Please do not call me before ___ in the morning."

He expected my husband to read between the lines. Mind you, there is nothing written "between the lines". Anyone with a communication disorder, like aphasia, can barely discern the words that are seen and heard, let alone comprehend the words that are left unsaid.

I told my husband that his friend had been saying a lot of things that failed to convey what he meant without coming right out and saying it.

Bruce was angered and frustrated. I could even say that he was hurt.

"WHY doesn't anyone say what they mean? It's hard enough for me, without trying to figure these things out for myself."

"Why?" indeed.

Why DON'T we say what we mean?

I was speaking with a friend this morning. I got her to sharing on the topic of speaking between the lines, innuendo, and off handed remarks.

She had a ready example to share. She mentioned that, when she was a child, her father would clear his throat when he was doing a chore. He would do it again and again, seemingly losing patience with each sound. She was a child. She could not make the leap in comprehension and discern a message in his grunts. She can't remember the point at which she discovered that clearing his throat was a call for her assistance.
It is a heavy load of expectations we place on each other when our communication is anything but clear.

It seems to me that we force the listener to be responsible for the very meaning of our communication. Are we testing their intelligence or attempting to humiliate them for the lack thereof? Is it our arrogance or a ploy to boost our ego?

When our listener is expected to discern the hidden meanings in the things that we say, we are waging war between the lines.

NOTE: I challenge the reader to take an enlightening trip through a thesaurus and discover many of the slings and arrows in the arsenal of guile:

acrimony, allusion, ambiguity, amphibology, analogy, answer, aphorism, aspersion, assumption, badinage, banter, bitterness, bon mot, brickbat, burlesque, caricature, casual remark, causticity, censure, chaff, chaffing, chitchat, comeback, connotation, contempt, corrosiveness, crack, criticism, cutting remark, cynicism, denotation, derision, device, dig*, dirty dig, disparagement, double meaning, drollery, dump*, entanglement, equivocality, equivocation, equivoque, exchange, expression, facetiousness, flourish, flouting, flower, fun, fun, gag, gossip, guess, guile, hint, hot lead, humor, hunch, hyperbole, hypothesis, idea, imagery, implication, impression, imputation, incidental mention, indication, inference, inkling, innuendo, insinuation, intimation, invective, iota, irony, jab, jeer, jeering, jest, jesting, jocularity, joke, joshing, kidding, lampoon, lampoonery, lark, levity, malapropism, manner of speaking, metaphor, mockery, mordancy, observation, ornament, overtone, oxymoron, parody, parting shot*, pasquinade, persiflage, play, play on, pleasantry, pointer, practical joke, prank, presumption, print, pun, put down, put-on*, quip, quotation, raillery, ramification, rancor, rank out, reference, rejoinder, remark, reminder, repartee, reply, response, retort, ribbing, ridicule, riposte, sally, sally, sarcasm, satire, scoffing, scorn, send-up*, sharpness, signification, simile, skit, slam*, sneaking suspicion, sneer, sneering, spoof, squib*, suggestion, superciliousness, suspicion, swipe, takeoff*, taunt, tell-tale, tergiversation, tinge, tip, tip-off, token, trace, travesty, trick, trope, undertone, warning, way of speaking, whiff, whimsicality, wink, wisecrack, wisecrack, wit, witticism, wittiness, wordplay, ...... WORD PLAY?