We were talking about seeing the Transformers movie the other night and Stew asked Bronwyn if she was going to see it. “Well,” she said, “I’m not really into Transformers-”

“What don’t you like about them?” I queried. “The robot form, or the other form?”

She gave me the most awesome blank look, peering into my head, trying to parse the meaning from my brain. I love that look.* It reminds me how you can be talking directly to someone but be in a completely different mindspace from them. Poor Bron did not realise that my comment was a cold act of conversational sabotage, and was cycling through mindspaces trying to find a context where my question would make sense. (If there is such a context, I would love to hear about it.)

I recently saw a girl I (used to) know, one who also has a very different personality to mine. She would often confirm my jokes with me before partaking of the humour (as in, “Did you mean… ?”). It was a great reminder of why I found her appealing (character! Many people would just nod and smile as their eyes glazed over) and why I found her annoying (sucking the humour dry). How very Greco-Faulk-Shakespearian tragic. Someone should make a play about it.

* Generally writing something like this results in the first comment being, “Actually, I was wondering what you said because I didn’t hear you over the loud music.” This makes you look like an over-analytical, self-important git. But hey. No one ever said writing was fun. If it weren’t for the excellent money, I doubt anyone would bother.