As I sat in my office this morning waiting for my next client to arrive I flipped through my latest Psychology Today magazine(ha cha cha) and found an article on "The Comical Hypothetical". It's all about the common verbal play between people that starts out with a joking comment that quickly spirals into an outrageous made-up story that could have been started with a "what if", but often doesn't. I have these types of conversations all the time. In fact I think the imagined "what if" dominates my conversations. I may just talk about made up ideas far more then I talk about real ones.
For example: I was with my cousins on Thanksgiving this year and a lot of time was spent sort of watching football. My 13 y.o. cousin was pondering why a particular team was so good. She speculated that they must practice a lot, and then joked that perhaps it was because they practiced not at all. I offered, "There is always the possibility that they are robots." which led into an afternoon of identifying which of the footballers were clearly robots and which were not...which really just meant that at varying points during the game one of us would point towards the tv and say quietly "robot."
I have been accused as being "weird" or "goofy" many times in my life. I am thankful, this thanksgiving season, to now be able to point out that I am, in fact, employing a very common conversational technique. Thank you very much.
robot.
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