Did anyone watch Friends' Thursday night? The part I'm refering to goes something like this.

Joey: "Phebs, I'm so glad you're here. I need you to teach me French for an audition."
Phoebe : "OK"

Jump ahead a few sceens to the lessons

Phoebe: "OK, just repeat after me 'Je m'appel Claude.'"
Joey : "Blah, blah, blah bleu"

It continues on where Phoebe becomes frustrated because Joey really thinks he is speaking French and mimicking Phoebe perfectly but really, he is not. I've been having alot of those lately. Where I SWEAR the words coming out of my mouth are plain English, yet somehow the result is not what the words were supposed to convey.

Case in point, in December I went to a hair salon (chain one) on the way from work to my office Christmas party. I had been SO busy with work I had no time to see my hair person and it was driving me crazy. When looking at my hair, the stylist said, "You have layers. Would you like to keep them?" to which I replied, "They are longer layers for body, and yes, please keep them." When the blow drying time came, what I had was hair that was angled from my bangs on the left side straight back to where my hair stopped.

The update to my job search is another Blah, blah bleu moment. I received a message from the Bobs last Wednesday asking if I was available "next Tuesday around lunchtime". I called Bob1 back (apparently I was supposed to call Bob2 back, but the marketing guy I played phone tag with gave me a bad rap for not returning phone calls, so I just called the number I knew since I was in the car and couldn't write another number down. Plus, meeting with two Bobs, who work together, should it matter? Not a great excuse, but the truth.) Thursday and said the coming Tuesday at lunch would be perfect. Then I scheduled the rest of my work week around that. I hadn't received a call as to what "lunchtime" was, so first thing this morning I turned on my cell phone to call him and found a message he'd left 5 minutes earlier confirming my appointment for tomorrow at 2pm. I'm guessing in Blah, Blah, Blah Bleu language Tuesday lunchtime = Wednesday 2pm.
(Needless to say, I think I'm going to turn this position down.)

I'm kind of worried now that things like "I'd like a slice of pizza" will blah, blah, bleu themselves into "I lived in Italy for a year." Or "Hi my name is Jenn" will be "Please take my car forever." See how that could be a worry? Maybe it's like the Field of Dreams. Maybe only the people who are "in the loop" can see the Moonlight Graham message on the scoreboard. Or maybe it's like Timothy Busfield and you can only see the players once you believe.

Maybe if I had listened to the whole message, stopped to write down the number and called the correct Bob this wouldn't have happened. Or perhaps I should've just said "Yes" to the hairdresser when she asked if I wanted to keep the layers. And now, possibly I need to be careful to make sure I over describe everything and make sure not to just assume they are on the same wave length as I am. (Even if we have been over it and over it.) You'd think explaining "new" things to people for a living, communication wouldn't be a re-occuring issue in my life. Maybe we are asking our brains to hold to much and remember too much. Maybe constant communication reaffirming thoughts, feelings, and scheduled appointments are what we need in a life filled with lots and lots of things to remember. If we all knew we didn't have to remember quite so much, maybe we could listen to others and correctly translate their words and forever rid ourselves of blah, blah, bleu language. All this questioning begs the question....

Are we too busy or too distracted by our own lives and all that society and technology created for us to do and remember (and that we are expected to do and remember) that we blah, blah, bleu in both speech and listening everyday - even the important things?