Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal: Communication

The key to how

By James Knudsen

Click on any internet page, flip open to any magazine article or tune-in to any program on the topic of relationships and communication will be listed as one of the key ingredients to a successful one. Having communicated successfully and poorly in relationships that have faired likewise I can attest to the accuracy of the statement, “communication is key.” And so, I’m not going to debate the point. I will argue that the “how” of communication is often given short shrift. What if the way you communicate no longer works? What then?

My significant other, Melany, and I have been communicating via various means for nearly four years. Early on, as in, before we called it a relationship, our communication was via modern electronic means. The earliest communique was via Classmates.com which led to Facebook and then to e-mail and texting. These were all before a first date. I should add at this point that the relationship was being conducted over a distance in excess of 150 miles, so sitting down for coffee and a chat was not an option and some of us don’t like phones. Personally, I’m fine with ’em.
    So it was that via various digital methods we became re-acquainted and enjoyed our first evening out for dinner. Several weeks later, following more electronic communiqués, we went out again in the small town where I was performing. At some point there was sun back-lighting someone’s raven mane and there were smiles in the eyes and I spent the next hour trying to figure out how and where I was going to kiss this woman before she left to go back to her life and I left to perform a Sunday matinee. Luckily, I figured it out. But now what? Presently, we were living 177 miles apart and once my acting job was finished and I was back at my usual address we’d be 175 miles apart, a negligible improvement.

    That Sunday, after the show, I found paper and pen and wrote a letter. In it I proposed that we continue to communicate with pen and paper. And we did. Multiple letters per week. We wrote from home and from work. We wrote from the comfort of an easy chair or the discomfort of coach. I became particular about what I wrote with and what I wrote on. I noted the differing friction coefficients produced by various pen and paper combinations.
    And I learned about another human being in a way I hadn’t before. Letters are one of the better ways of expressing hopes, dreams and desires. Or describing the way the industrial cities of a nation look from a train window. Or just recounting an average day. The letters continued steadily for two years as I changed addresses five times. If the U.S. Postal Service wanted to save itself it would encourage letter writing. But now we are blocks away instead of miles and the letters have slowed to a trickle. Face to face communication is almost daily. And when we don’t see each other there’s always texting. Until it stops working.

This is where I get to the part about “how.” You see, this past weekend texting stopped working. I could send. Sent texts could be received. But sent replies could not be received and still cannot. Put another way: I can text her, she can’t text me. And two decidedly analog adults are at a loss to figure it out. Worse, it caused genuine concern on both ends.

“Why haven’t I heard from her?”
“Why doesn’t he respond to my texts?”
“I hope she’s not mad at me.”
“I hope he’s not mad at me.”
“What did I do?”
“He must’ve done something!”

    The issue was finally solved via a phone call. Phone calls are just something we don’t do. It is a communication form of last resort. And make no mistake, that is fine by me. I spent far too many hours of my youth engaged in phone calls that took over an hour to say what could have been said in five minutes of relaxed conversation.

“What are you doing?”
“Not much.” (silence)
(silence)
(more silence)
(still more silence)
“What are you doing now?”
“Pretty much the same thing.”
“Right on.”

If I ever find myself musing, in a breathy sigh, “Oh, to be young again” I need only think of that and I am cured.
    For now, Melany and I will keep in touch via messages sent using that ancient system known as “e-mail.” Good god, we’re practically Phoenicians. But this latest disappointment at the hands of technology has put the pen and the paper in a better light. Slow, deliberate, inconvenient, and utterly reliable.
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Copyright © 2014 by James Knudsen

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