Dear Men,
NEWS FLASH: The age of telegrams is no more, so you are not being charged by the number of letters you send. Seriously, where in the evolutionary chain did you lose your ability to respond to satisfy? Or is there a finishing school where you are taught to answer only and only with TLRs (Three letter responses) or less. Yes, No, Ok or Hmm. And what exactly is ‘Hmm’? Why are you pretending to think when that is exactly what you are avoiding to do?
Ah! You must be trying to save some precious time and energy. If so, then might as well channel that energy and time into inventing software that can convert the regular message keyboard on your phones, with all the unwanted letters to one that has only 8 letters Y-E-S-N-O-K-H-M. That way, you save yourself some critical monitor space to view cricket scores with more white space around it.
But since that or no other good is going to come out of your penchant for curt, closed and hostile dialogs, lets atleast try to understand where we are going wrong. I get that there are instances when a simple ‘OK’ will do but most times your Neanderthal ‘grunt’ equivalent responses don’t really apply. Sample this…
Q: Are you coming home for dinner?
Your TLR response: Yes
That’s a sound application of a TLR. 10 points to you.
Q: I was wondering what to have for dinner?
Your TLR response: Yes
That calls for a ‘shame on you’, mister, especially on someone who devours pages and pages of manuals with 10 point size text to understand how a shaver works and yet doesn’t feel it has been explained enough.
So, for the sake of life striding smoothly for both genders let’s take a moment to appreciate the word ‘communication’. Say it with me, c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-i-o-n. You see the length of the word, friend? There is a reason why the word is so long. It demands multitude and unbefitting application of TLRs defeats the purpose. I know its sucks but size did and will always matter.
Yours truly,
The lady who writes long messages expecting more than TLRs.
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