choose your own adventure

Talking with people, in any language, is a lot like reading a choose your own adventure book. Because if someone asks if you like cabbage you can say "It reminds me of my mother" or "It gives me a rash." And depending on which you choose will determine whether the conversation is about childhood memories or skin ailments. Maybe their mother was a professional wind-surfer. Maybe they think people who talk about rashes are disgusting. There's no way of knowing what's going to happen next. Wild!

The worst thing about choose your own adventure is that you can only choose one adventure. Which is why the best thing about conversations is when someone mishears you. You say "I'm going out of town this weekend" and they hear "Do you want to write a screenplay together this weekend?" And then you get a sneak peek at how they would have responded. Maybe they've been dying to write a screenplay and you never would have known.

It's like accidentally looking at page 156 instead of 165 and seeing what would have happened if you had investigated that scraping noise. You would have died. When people mishear you everyone gets twice as many adventures. Now let's introduce a foreign language.

Tonight during dinner the woman I live with asked how my day was, and I said it was pretty good. She responded with "Yeah, I don't like thinking about what's in hot dogs either. But at least it isn't dogs!"

And now I know what would have happened if I had randomly brought up the content of hot dogs. It would have gone over surprisingly well. No luck yet on getting her to write a screenplay with me.