(aka We Speak Our Words Mostly Without Forethought But They Often Land Like The Most Sophisticated War Plans Of Our Species’ Most Strategically Brilliant Military Minds)

Okay!
Let’s pay attention for a moment
Let’s consider how context can rapidly evolve something said simply
From plain and perfunctory
To pure puncturing pain
Listen!
And let’s take a quick look in degrees
Let’s say three
Three degrees of context
(skipping over some nuances, sure, but goddammit we only have so much time and space here):

“Okay, bye!”

That phrase.
Two words.
Not much to unpack, right?
Wrong!
Dead wrong.
You couldn’t be more wrong.

Let’s try it again, goddammit:

“Okay, bye!”

• hurts little and actually feels efficient when a work colleague says so at the natural conclusion of a yet another content-filled conference call

• humiliates and generates instantaneous cheek-flushing when a woman says so to the young man enamored of her and in the immediate aftermath of his incoherent stumbling to find the words that will finally reveal his intrinsic handsomeness and star quality

• h-bombs the father’s aging but still child-like heart when the son says so, gathered among his friends, after the dad joke is made, ham-handedly sure, but actually quite funny to the now faltering father walking away wounded in his withering heart, head hung, stunned

Life is context
And adjusting to it.
Can you stay true and you in each new scene?
Can you, maggot?
(I’m not a drill sergeant but goddammit I dreamed I would be!
But I can’t be
I just can’t
These kids are so darn cute!)