Assumptions.
I had an argument with my husband yesterday. Well, I shouted at him in a stream of conciousness way and he stood there looking puzzled. I was trying to explain that one of the reasons that we find him difficult is that he makes silent snap judgements about so many things without ever actually asking for details of what is going on. There used to be an advertisement for something which showed a black man dashing along a crowded street, with a white man running after him shouting, 'Stop thief'. So you made the obvious assumption. Then the film rewound for an extra few seconds and you saw a white youth run out of a shop, followed by the black shopkeeper and then a white customer. In the first clip the youth had already disappeared round a corner.

Perhaps it is because I read so many detect1ve stories but I think about this a lot, pointlessly. About the way your brain will try to make sense of even the most surreal things but is only able to draw from the stores of information that it has. In fact, that is what dreaming is supposed to be, isn't it? So a large amount of the time our assumptions are going to be completely wrong.

My argument was sparked by my husband saying two annoying things in quick succession. That my son 'always' went to bed at six o'clock in the morning and that I ate really unhealthily as I 'always' had a boiled egg and brown toast for breakfast. (He is STILL on the maddening yaH* diet). After a few minutes of raised voice (mine) I was able to make him admit that these assumptions were based on his having twice in the last month got up insanely early and met my son on his way to bed. For the other twenty nine days he had not seen him and had no idea when he had gone to sleep. The egg thing was - apart from not being unhealthy in the least - also based on a few random sightings. As I usually have no breakfast at all or just a banana. Only a couple of months ago he shouted at me because he had noticed that I sneakily ate a fried breakfast every day up in my bedroom. I was, in fact, taking my son's 'brunch' up to him as he was doing the sniktA* d1et secretly so that his sisters didn't tease him.

I screamed, 'Why can't you just ASK more?', but I don't know. Obviously it's something we all do and I suppose the trouble is that, as your brain has explained the situation to you in a perfectly satisfactory way, you don't realise that any questioning is necessary. So, wait a minute - was that boy in 18th century clothes that I passed on the staircase really one of the children's friends on their way to a fancy dress party?


- posted by Iris @ 8/15/2004 10:49:00 AM comment