Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[Yvaine]

Our school still had some crime around.  Can't tell you how many bomb threats we had at our school one fall.   Almost every time we got evacuated to the middle school's library but hey I didn't mind, I loved to read and it was a guaranteed hour at least that I got to sit in a comfy little cranny somewhere and read. 

Then one day, on my birthday at that, on a drizzly gray November day, the kid posted bomb threat warnings on the front doors of both the high school and the middle school, likely hoping that we'd get sent home. Nope, we just stood out a safe distance from the school waiting for them to do a search and let us back in.  I was rather annoyed at the kid who had done it cause at that rate we all knew it was a kid who attended that school.

This reminds me of something that still hurts my brain to this day.

I was still at high school when the September 11 attacks happened. The high school I went to is in the New Zealand capital and within easy walking distance of my school was the US embassy, the British high commission, the Fijian high commission (and it was only a year or so after the George Speight coup), parliament, the high court, the court of appeal, the ministry of defence, the ministry of education, the crown law office, and probably a number of other government buildings and embassies that I can't remember. The brain hurty part? The day after the attacks, someone called in a bomb threat to the ministry of youth affairs.

I just don't get why you would pick youth affairs as your target with all those other buildings around. Especially at such a time.

Probably it was someone connected with youth affairs who had something to gain from, say, work ceasing there for a day. Or a disgruntled employee. I went to high school with a guy who turned out to be calling in bomb threats to the school from a pay phone at the school to get out of class. It wouldn't make much sense as a target for "regular" terrorists--but for pranksters or disgruntled individuals, maybe.

[EmmaJ.]

I would respond to this sort of thing with something a Catholic nun said in religion class when I was 15. 

'Because God is all just, we know there is a Hell. 
Because God is all merciful, we don't know if there's anybody in it'.

I absolutely love this.

[Carotte]

I must have broken my SO's brain yesterday. For the first time he really asked me questions and tried to understand how my brain 'works', I have dysorthography (not sure if it exist in english - close to dyslexia but with grammar and orthography), and he's from the grammar police. So the fact that I cannot, for the life of me, put a concept that I could learn to heart (the words, not the meaning, I don't get it) and use it at the right place is just boggling for him.
My brain takes the written world as a big bag of confusion if I try to take part in it. I really wish he could 'get it' because it has caused me enough pain during my schooling* that I really wish someone would just accept it for what it is.
I can't blame him for not really understanding, it's like asking someone not on the spectrum to imagine what it's like to suffer from autism.


*That's what prompted the conversation, turns out, hearing (said or heavily implied)  day in and day out, from 6 to 19y/old that you must be stupid, not making any effort, good for nothing, will leave traces.

[mbbored]

I had one with a classmate today via email.

CM: mbbored, can I borrow your statistics textbook?
Me: Sure! Are you going to be at the seminar tomorrow? I can bring it to you then.
CM: dep. fac? no fac? pref off, use copy.
Me: Excuse me? Did you mean to respond with that?
CM: What?
Me: I didn't understand your email.
CM: What didn't you understand?
Me: Any of it.
CM: I asked to borrow a textbook.
Me: And I said yes. Then I asked you if you'd be at seminar so I could hand it off to you.
CM: And I said, it depends on whether or not the faculty will be there. I prefer to meet you at your office, where maybe I could use your copier.
Me: I did not get any of that.
CM: You should really study shorthand.

Yeah, shorthand was the problem there.

[Nikko-chan]

I had one with a classmate today via email.

CM: mbbored, can I borrow your statistics textbook?
Me: Sure! Are you going to be at the seminar tomorrow? I can bring it to you then.
CM: dep. fac? no fac? pref off, use copy.
Me: Excuse me? Did you mean to respond with that?
CM: What?
Me: I didn't understand your email.
CM: What didn't you understand?
Me: Any of it.
CM: I asked to borrow a textbook.
Me: And I said yes. Then I asked you if you'd be at seminar so I could hand it off to you.
CM: And I said, it depends on whether or not the faculty will be there. I prefer to meet you at your office, where maybe I could use your copier.
Me: I did not get any of that.
CM: You should really study shorthand.

Yeah, shorthand was the problem there.

I got a headache just from reading that... oy vey

[Piratelvr1121]

Yeah, once she explained I was able to go back and understand what she meant by the shorthand. 

[stkatie00]

I had one with a classmate today via email.

CM: mbbored, can I borrow your statistics textbook?
Me: Sure! Are you going to be at the seminar tomorrow? I can bring it to you then.
CM: dep. fac? no fac? pref off, use copy.
Me: Excuse me? Did you mean to respond with that?
CM: What?
Me: I didn't understand your email.
CM: What didn't you understand?
Me: Any of it.
CM: I asked to borrow a textbook.
Me: And I said yes. Then I asked you if you'd be at seminar so I could hand it off to you.
CM: And I said, it depends on whether or not the faculty will be there. I prefer to meet you at your office, where maybe I could use your copier.
Me: I did not get any of that.
CM: You should really study shorthand.

Yeah, shorthand was the problem there.

That looks like the type of shorthand I would use while taking notes-something that makes perfect sense to me, but not to anyone else! Or me, if I didn't go back and rewrite my notes soon enough, for that matter...

[PeterM]

CM: You should really study shorthand.

And you should really get your own stinkin' textbook.

[mbbored]

CM: You should really study shorthand.

And you should really get your own stinkin' textbook.

Ehh, it's not about the textbook. It's not for an assigned course; it's more of a useful reference. We all have different books and frequently borrow each others.

[Elfmama]

I made my grandson's brain hurt some years back.  He was about...8, maybe. 

"Grandma, what kind of video games did they have when you were my age?"

When I was 8 it was 1963.  That there were no electronic games of any kind was an alien concept to him.  I remember how strange as it seemed to me at that age that my mother grew up with no television. 

[cabbageweevil]

CM: dep. fac? no fac? pref off, use copy.

My first thought on reading this bit would have been: obscene abuse of some kind?

[Piratelvr1121]

I made my grandson's brain hurt some years back.  He was about...8, maybe. 

"Grandma, what kind of video games did they have when you were my age?"

When I was 8 it was 1963.  That there were no electronic games of any kind was an alien concept to him.  I remember how strange as it seemed to me at that age that my mother grew up with no television.

I made my boy's brains hurt when I tried to explain to them the DOS prompt when you used to start up computers, before there was Windows and clicking on icons was available for opening programs.   That you'd have to remember the location of the program and type it up exactly or it would tell you "File not found". 

[Melle]

I made my boy's brains hurt when I tried to explain to them the DOS prompt when you used to start up computers, before there was Windows and clicking on icons was available for opening programs.   That you'd have to remember the location of the program and type it up exactly or it would tell you "File not found".

Well, there was always the "dir" command. Ah, good times

[Twik]

And the lovely "ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?"

[Diane AKA Traska]

I made my boy's brains hurt when I tried to explain to them the DOS prompt when you used to start up computers, before there was Windows and clicking on icons was available for opening programs.   That you'd have to remember the location of the program and type it up exactly or it would tell you "File not found".

Well, there was always the "dir" command. Ah, good times

C:/games/coolgame/coolgame.exe
>coolgame.exe not found
cd..
C:/games/dir
C:/games/goodgame/goodgame.exe