I had a conversation tonight that baffled me. Generally I don’t feel quite so inept in conversations. I think I’m pretty patient and I’ve had lots of practice attempting to (and not doing so bad) understand not-always-clear conversations from people who don’t know
English well, are really old and/or senile are drunk, high or crazy (really crazy and off their medication,) but there is a guy in one of my linguistics classes who just . . . baffles me, every time.

I would like to point out that he’s a really nice guy. I don’t mean that in a generic way. I mean I intuitively know, for sure, he’s an honestly good person. I don’t even know how to express the fact that I believe that he is absolutely genuine in his goodness.

Usually when I meet people perceived as “really nice” I try to avoid them, like they are too goody-goody-syurpy-sweet-happy-lovey-lovey-fake for me to take for more than a few minutes in Shannonland. Shannonland is full of brutal realities laced with garlands of free
flowers the florist can’t keep over the weekend, sarcastic inside smiles, 30 year old discarded double-knit polyesters, hard candy and homemade gifts. I don’t have much room for sticky pretenders.

But this guy isn’t like that-- I would allow him in Shannonland if only I could understand what the heck was coming out of his mouth. He looks like a together person, well groomed, his clothes match-- it’s not his accent, it’s standard American, but when he starts talking I get the sensation that his words aren’t coming out in the proper order. (I’m not the only one who thinks so, the girl who sits in front of me turned around and asked me if I thought he was on drugs.) He takes long pauses in the middle of his sentences, which makes me think that he is formulating something profound, but when it comes out I find myself thinking, “I know its English, but . . . WHAT IN THE WORLD?!”

He approached me tonight to comment on something I had said weeks ago. I hardly remembered what he was referring to--a question about a linguistics technique for formulating structurally correct questions. Once I figured out he was referring to,
he started talking about how people are drawn to him, how is mother is depressive and how he’d been thinking about my question for a while. I was trying to figure out how these subjects related, but I found my mind wondering to other questions like, “IS he on drugs after all? or maybe I am and this conversation is the result of a bad trip.” After a while I just agreed with him. I don’t know what I agreed to. He wished me a good life as a missionary (did I say I wanted to be a missionary?-- I don’t remember that) and we departed. He is a odd duck, an odd, odd duck.

Odd Duck--here’s to you-- keep’em guessing!