Four and a Half Years Ago

I was looking for an old file and found this, written on 6/18/03, about my friend Brad.

*****

My friend is kind of dense. What kind of dense? He has a tendency to project his mechanistic view of the world on things that don't work like machines at all. People, for instance. Despite a few staggering flashes of intuition, the comings and goings of the minds around him have my friend entirely stumped. I've never known anyone better at understanding how stuff works than Brad, but this gift of his doesn't seem to grant him any special insight into matters of emotion, or, for that matter, life.

I blame the media. People who get printed, broadcast or recorded, recklessly slinging metaphors like "building a relationship," "maintaining your marriage," or even "laying a solid foundation from which to construct a sound framework of trust." I mean, the guy can hardly be blamed for not understanding why his wife took the keys and left to go get herself flowers after her first day of a new job. As far as he could tell, she was a happy woman yesterday; today she should be a happy woman with a promotion. So who needs flowers?