Part II

Here is the next edition to my step-by-step-guide-to-a-happier-e-mail-communicating-and-fun. In the first issue we discussed the why people write and what should be the correct time period to reply to them. This next class is called, “Reading between the lines.”

Ok, for the most part people right each other for business purposes, instruction and friendship. In this part we will discuss friendship. Everyone has their close set of friends, people who they have lived with for a long period of time, and they have been with them though disappointments, (remember the time they got drunk at your birthday party and started barking like a dog) sorrow and great happiness. These people are usually ones who have lived with you for a number of years and then have moved on to a different room, city, country, or continent. Since you have known that person, or persons for quite some time and understand their method of communicating your e-mails should be relatively problem free.

Now there is a class of friends that you have only met and spent a short amount of time with such as a month, two weeks, or five days, yet you found a great deal in common during the short amount of time you were in acquaintance, you developed a mutual bonding, whether it be romantic or purely friendship. Since the time that you knew each other was short, you chose a way to continue to get to know the other person, and that is through e-mail.

So you start writing him or her, and the first two or three e-mails are basically like that of meeting someone for the first time. The topics are usually not so personal and consist of subjects such as weather, movies/music/entertainment, and the bad infection that you got in your foot. But as time goes on, you start to get more personal questions such as, “Do you think I look fat in that bathing suit picture I sent you?” or “Who do you like better, me or you ex-girlfriend that you broke up with three years ago?”

Now for the most part the correct answer to the bathing suit question should be, “OF COURSE NOT!!!” not….“Define Fat?” But when we do comment, and for the most part I can say that we (us males) will always pick the negative answer…..OF COURSE NOT! To me those three words mean exactly what they mean. They do not mean, “I don’t like the color of your bathing suit, or your eyes are too close together. What that means is that we like you in your bathing suit, regardless of the color, even if you don’t.

Now when questions are being asked such as, “Do you like me or you ex- more?” if the answer comes back sounding like this… “Well my ex- and had great times together and I really enjoyed my time with him/her. That gives one the right to read between the lines. But if the answer says, “Well it was okay.” That does not mean that that he or she is fed up with you and wants to stop writing you, or that he is now having a Menag de trois with Anna Nicole Smith and Brad Pitt.

Sometimes there are trick questions that bounce back and forth….such as “Do you think so-and-so is cute?” Now when this happens the person, who receives this letter probably got back from a long day out at work, and when he comes home he is happily surprised to find a letter waiting for him, so he reads it and then afterwards decides to answer. Now when he re-reads the letter and finds the question. He will no doubt answer a straight yes, or no. With little thought that the yes will be read and then translated to, “Oh, my God! He’s having a hot relationship with my sister and I didn’t even know about.” Or if he answers no it will mean, “He thinks that my sister is ugly, so he must think that I’m ugly, he must be in a secret love affair with Diana Ross!”

For the most part we write exactly what we mean. When you are communicating by email, you can’t use body language, gestures, or sound affects. You want to get your point across as clearly as possible and therefore will try to make it as understanding and concise. When you get a reply saying that you look really wired in the picture where you’re standing in front of those funny mirrors. That means that you look weird standing in front of those funny mirrors, not those twelve OTHER pictures that could go on the cover of Cosmopolitan. Nor does it mean that your best friend and I are getting married.

I think what we need is a bit of trust, and that not everything we write has a double meaning to it, and that there are usually many other factors involved that you do not know about.

This next point is very important, what I have called, “Third Person Ignorance.” If you happen to be writing a member of the opposite sex and are slightly attracted to them, it is very common for most people to down play the importance of how much you play in their lives. Here is a little example.

When you discover an e-mail from the person you like, regardless of how short the e-mail is, you will be walking on clouds for days. The other people in the home notice how unusually happy you are, and ask what happened. You, of course reply “Nothing!” But the other person in you home is at that moment smarter then you and has already figured out that you got an e-mail from a particular somebody. A coy smile creeps across their lips of the third member in your home and asks “Are you in love with him/her?” You, quickly go on the defensive and answer a quick “No, of course not!” and then go off highly twiterpated.

Then during the next few days your friend might have to write another member of your home for business or other purposes. They, wanting to get a third person’s view on how you feel for them ask about you and what you are doing, such as….. “How is So-and-so? What are they doing? Does he like me?” The third member very innocently remembers that you mentioned that you were not “in love” him/her and proceeds to write back saying…. “So-and-so is fine, but he says that he is not in love with you.” Which is of course an untruthful truth. Now imagine the shock when, in the next few days you get a letter from your friend saying that you have been saying things about him/her…….but then quickly adds that she/he doesn’t care and pretends that their not hurt when they are hurt. You, of course are quite surprised at this sudden outbreak of emotion, remembering that up until this time the most emotional letter you ever received was when he/she wrote that she broke her nail playing guitar or that he pulled a muscle while doing a push-up. You quickly write back asking what is was that got him/her all upset. And they reply that it was nothing, when in fact it really was something, but are pretending that it was nothing, so then you go on thinking that the something was nothing, and since nothing had transformed into something that is now quoted as being nothing, you register that since it was something made out of nothing, decide to extinguish the something that got made out of nothing. Until a few months later when another something comes up.

All of this could have been avoided if first, you prayed before you answered your e-mails and make sure that they are positive and uplifting. Second, if you receive an e-mail from your friend telling you that you are great fun to write and that they really enjoy your e-mails. And then the next day you receive an contradicting e-mail from a third party saying that he/she is deliberately sending around hurtful e-mails that you look worse then his Great-Aunt’s posteriori, the best thing to do, is to pray and ask the Lord what to do, follow through with what the Lord tells you, and then go write an e-mail asking if what that person said is really true.

There are many more points and reminders of what we could all do to make our e-mails much more enjoyable. But if we all stick and bring the Lord more in our E-mails I’m sure we’ll all have fewer misunderstandings between ourselves.

Happy writing!