Dickens called early, he wants to stay closed today for inventory. What did I say months ago? Sure enough, there are some discrepancies as to what was on the shelves and when. I wanted to bar code everything. But that is so much work, I'd want a cut of the action. (An unexpected day off.)
The unexpected day off found me over at JZ’s. For some reason they wanted him to work today, so he missed practice. I showed up with the guitar and amp, ready to go, but he had to head out the door. None of this would have happened if he had answered his phone. So I turned around and drove back. He volunteered to head out here tomorrow for a practice, but only one in about thirty such promises are for real.
He knows the French version of a few dozen country songs yet could not tell you who sang the originals or even what the title would be in English. Most of the time I can get it from the melody, but he’s got a collection of tunes that have no counterparts although they follow standard country patterns. The sad part is that we cannot play them because he cannot break the habit of changing chords whenever the vocals change. I showed him the 12-bar blues, something he had never even suspected existed before.
He’s got enough equipment to play a small gig, but unless he can get over that habit of not playing each measure out, he will never make it. Worse, we lack enough of a common vocabulary to work on a solution. He gets it subconsciously when just playing, but as soon as he begins to sing, dropped chords. This is usually because he starts singing at the wrong place (before the chord plays out the measure). He does not understand how it could be wrong if it fits the guitar part.
We got through six songs; it was supposed to be eight. It seems he also forgot to write them down. Isn’t it strange how somebody who could not form a band if his life depended on it can naturally sing and play guitar better than I can after a half-lifetime of trying. I hear some dork in the audience asking why, if I’m so bad at it, why don’t I quit trying. Well, sir, do I ask why you don’t give up sex when you are so lousy at it? Gotcha!
There are a few local clubs I should have checked out since I don’t mind Sunday gigs, but I decided to stay in and make chicken stew. Does anyone remember Paulina? She called again, and the conversation was exasperating again. She denies it, but she intentionally misinterprets everything I say, sentence by sentence. Does the thrift sell mirrors? We don’t sell furniture. Does the thrift sell bookshelves? We don’t sell furniture. Does the thrift sell futons? We don’t sell furniture. Believe me, she can keep this up indefinitely.
No matter what you say to them, they always repeat it back to you in slightly altered form. At first you think they are doing this to better understand what you just said. Wrong, if you listen closely, they are re-wording what you said in a carefully angled ego-centric fashion.
It is most similar to those police interrogators in the movies who are constantly trying to trick the suspect into saying the wrong thing. You know, the ones who just don’t realize you are on to them. Or those jerk salesmen who keep saying you agreed to something earlier when you did not. They are constantly trying to trap you into saying something they can take out of context down the line.
Such people will always find me hard to get along with. I will stop them and go back to what it was I really did say and terminate the conversation if they persist in their little game. With Paulina, this means every second sentence means backing up and repeating the first until she gets it word for word. Without any changes. She could put a stop to this nonsense by not re-wording everything I say, but she appears incapable of any other type of interaction.
The baloney today was she had asked me if I converted VHS tapes to DVD. Yes, but not right now because my tape decks are worn out. Everything will have to wait until I get new ones. What, I ask you, is so difficult to understand about that? No, I am not “letting down” an innocent customer-victim to whom I have an obligation to perform. No, I will not commit to “a specific time” when I will buy these tape decks. No, I did not say I would “call back when I get them”. No, I didn’t say I “would not do any work until I felt like it”. No, I did not say any given tape was “not important to me”. No, I am not going to have a discussion about how I “expect to run a successful business” if I don’t own the right equipment. This actually went on for at least five minutes over this single topic – 99% of it after I told her “not right now”.
She also repeats things back in a leading fashion, where you often have to correct several things to her one. You can’t just cut off the conversation because at any given moment she is harboring a half-dozen idiotic misconceptions that you ignore at your own peril. The sad part is, people like her live in a cocoon whereby they surround themselves with a group that is equally neurotic, so none of them mention when she gets out of line. Then they start thinking the world is out of touch. If I thought they wouldn’t go berserk, I’d introduce her to some guitarists and let them feed off each other.
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