(no subject)
Read my sister's LJ post from today...
Inventions
i think there should be a kind of bad news phone where if it rings then you know its going to be bad news when you answer it. that way if you were in the middle of doing something that required you to be relatively carefree, like i dont know shopping for a computer or writing a paper or doing your taxes, you could not answer it and worry about it later. of course i guess thats kind of flawed because then you would be sitting there trying to shop or write or do math in your head going "ok now i know something bad has happened because the bad news phone rang. i cant keep working without knowing what it is." then you would have to go find out and then you wouldnt be able to go back to what you were doing.
but at least you would know how to answer the phone right? you wouldnt answer the bad news phone saying "hey whats new!" or "its so nice to hear from you!" because you wouldnt really want to hear whats new and after hearing what the person has called to say you would come to the conclusion that it wasnt, in fact, so nice to hear from them. what im saying is that bad news over the phone comes out of relative nowhere, and it would be nice if we had a way to be prepared for it even before someone has the chance to say "i have some bad news. i want you to be prepared." no one should have to start out a phone call that way. and if they rang on the bad news phone they wouldnt have to. the person who answered would answer with "what is it?" and then you could launch right into your bad news.
of course watching someone else get bad news on the phone but not knowing what it is is also horrible, but i havent been able to imagine an invention that would make that any easier yet. if only there were some kind of something that could help you piece together the snippets of conversation that you can hear and come to the correct conclusion so that you can act accordingly even before your father tells you through the window screen of the study, while hes outside and youre in, "today hp and brittany went out into the garage and found kathy dead. she shot herself." because if you had thought of it on your own, now you wouldnt have to kick yourself for not realizing that when your dad had been saying something about "bipolar disorder" and "prone to depression" this must have been what he was talking about. even though its ridiculous to expect that from yourself because you had no idea that your aunt kathy (who wasnt really your aunt but actually married to your dads cousin) was bipolar and prone to despression until this moment. but you still feel like you should have known.
and then it would be perfect if there was something that could block the uncontrolled rush of memories that happens when you learn that someone has died. because youd rather not think of that time in the everglades when you were riding with kathy on one three-wheeler while your mother and brother and sister were on the other when your mom flipped hers and you didnt know what happened to them. and in the minutes before you found them, your eight-year-old mind cant help but imagine that something horrible has happened it will be just you and your father, the two of you, for the rest of your life. you would rather not have to endure a memory of kathy alive that still carries the possibility of death. so instead you try to remember that time when you visited all of them in georgia a few years back (youre pretty sure thats the last time you saw all of them) and she made fun of your mom for eating her cornbread with a fork instead of with her hands like a southerner. and then when you were all piling into your car to leave you took pictures on their front porch with their family and their dogs. and remembering this causes a twinge of doubt to surface because people that hug their dogs like that on the porch steps and lean forward to smile for a camera dont really kill themselves do they? and then because you now know someone has done just that, it means that youre missing something or have been consistently missing something over the past few years. which makes you feel out of touch with your family and that makes the whole situation that much more sad.
and then your mom has barely hung up the phone when it rings again and its your dads business partner calling to say that his mother has died. and its in that moment that you think about inventing the bad news phone.
BAM
It's been a really shitty 24 hours.
Inventions
i think there should be a kind of bad news phone where if it rings then you know its going to be bad news when you answer it. that way if you were in the middle of doing something that required you to be relatively carefree, like i dont know shopping for a computer or writing a paper or doing your taxes, you could not answer it and worry about it later. of course i guess thats kind of flawed because then you would be sitting there trying to shop or write or do math in your head going "ok now i know something bad has happened because the bad news phone rang. i cant keep working without knowing what it is." then you would have to go find out and then you wouldnt be able to go back to what you were doing.
but at least you would know how to answer the phone right? you wouldnt answer the bad news phone saying "hey whats new!" or "its so nice to hear from you!" because you wouldnt really want to hear whats new and after hearing what the person has called to say you would come to the conclusion that it wasnt, in fact, so nice to hear from them. what im saying is that bad news over the phone comes out of relative nowhere, and it would be nice if we had a way to be prepared for it even before someone has the chance to say "i have some bad news. i want you to be prepared." no one should have to start out a phone call that way. and if they rang on the bad news phone they wouldnt have to. the person who answered would answer with "what is it?" and then you could launch right into your bad news.
of course watching someone else get bad news on the phone but not knowing what it is is also horrible, but i havent been able to imagine an invention that would make that any easier yet. if only there were some kind of something that could help you piece together the snippets of conversation that you can hear and come to the correct conclusion so that you can act accordingly even before your father tells you through the window screen of the study, while hes outside and youre in, "today hp and brittany went out into the garage and found kathy dead. she shot herself." because if you had thought of it on your own, now you wouldnt have to kick yourself for not realizing that when your dad had been saying something about "bipolar disorder" and "prone to depression" this must have been what he was talking about. even though its ridiculous to expect that from yourself because you had no idea that your aunt kathy (who wasnt really your aunt but actually married to your dads cousin) was bipolar and prone to despression until this moment. but you still feel like you should have known.
and then it would be perfect if there was something that could block the uncontrolled rush of memories that happens when you learn that someone has died. because youd rather not think of that time in the everglades when you were riding with kathy on one three-wheeler while your mother and brother and sister were on the other when your mom flipped hers and you didnt know what happened to them. and in the minutes before you found them, your eight-year-old mind cant help but imagine that something horrible has happened it will be just you and your father, the two of you, for the rest of your life. you would rather not have to endure a memory of kathy alive that still carries the possibility of death. so instead you try to remember that time when you visited all of them in georgia a few years back (youre pretty sure thats the last time you saw all of them) and she made fun of your mom for eating her cornbread with a fork instead of with her hands like a southerner. and then when you were all piling into your car to leave you took pictures on their front porch with their family and their dogs. and remembering this causes a twinge of doubt to surface because people that hug their dogs like that on the porch steps and lean forward to smile for a camera dont really kill themselves do they? and then because you now know someone has done just that, it means that youre missing something or have been consistently missing something over the past few years. which makes you feel out of touch with your family and that makes the whole situation that much more sad.
and then your mom has barely hung up the phone when it rings again and its your dads business partner calling to say that his mother has died. and its in that moment that you think about inventing the bad news phone.
BAM
It's been a really shitty 24 hours.