COMPUTERS HAVE SAVED THE ART OF CONVERSATION | 2007-05-31
Finally, over half a century later, I realize what we meant when we complained about kids who "pulled on their mothers handbags and screamed for attention." Someone wrote a book called "Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." This piece is like that.
Why did we say everything about that kid "pulling on their mother's pocketbook?"
There were generally two types of people I was raised with, people with the courtesy we practiced and the lower level whites and blacks. But when they were around us, they tried to learn from us. If one of their kids got out of hand, they would slap them. By the time a kid got old enough to reach and grab hold of their mother's pocketbook, they didn't do it.
In our case, by the time I got old enough to stand up and reach my mother's pocketbook, it never OCURRED to me to do it. Yelling was trash, yelling was nigger stuff.
But it worked TWO ways. If a child who could barely stand said something, everybody LISTENED. If you are a child that age and you have a conscience, that makes you say something worthwhile and then shut up. You learn almost from your first words not to act like a nigger, not to be trash.
But in a way, I was spoiled rotten. Almost from the time I stopped wearing diapers, I was used to being LISTENED TO. But LISTENING was NOT what passes for listening today. Today "listening" means you stand there and let the other person FINALLY finish while you stand there panting like a dog to say what you want to say. You have no idea what the other person was talking about, but you let him finish, and that is LISTENING.
The result of one person waiting to say what he wants to say as soon as anther's lips stop moving is what passes for "the art of conversation" which the Internet is supposed to have destroyed.
I just spent a week listening to this "art of conversation" and every minute of it I WAS dying to get back to this blog and to Stormfront. Only HERE do we have what I call conversations.
The computer has SAVED the real art of conversation.