An observation I’ve had recently is about the commercialization of... everything. There are advertisements for curing depression/anxiety, and advertisements for learning to speak and write better; or as I like to say, "write more weller better good." Well, yesterday on the radio, I heard an advertisement for a program/product which claimed to help people speak better in social situations. It added that you would not have to worry or be anxious anymore about saying the wrong thing to someone.

Now, this basically combines the two ideas I just mentioned about phonetics and depression/anxiety. This actually sounds like a very interesting product, and could have helped me on more than one occasion. I sometimes worry about saying the wrong thing -- and usually do. The first one that comes to mind is the last time I came to work late. Before I even sat down, my boss asked me, "Why were you late?" to which I replied, "I was with your daughter most of the night, and we had a wonderful time exploring each other’s anatomy and finding new methods of achieving ecstasy which would be incomprehensible to a balding, smelly man such as yourself."

My problem is now obvious. I said the wrong thing. The proper response -- a response I thought of later -- would have been something to the effect of, "My car broke down on the Interstate." If I had been less anxious about sleeping with his daughter and being late for work, I could have thought of a good lie, however, I was far too anxious at the time, which resulted in poor speech.

Andy Alt

Mental Dimensions

http://mentaldimensions.blogspot.com/

A humor column for people who enjoy observational humor, political farce, comedy editorials, satire and spoof, along with an occasional dose of non humor