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Squigglyruth and l'esprit d'escalier
Jun. 22nd, 2004 09:45 pmSigh. I thought I had a nice title for this post, but while checking on the French spelling, I discovered that my understanding of the phrase is broader than is generally accepted. So if you were hoping for a brilliant, if delayed, riposte to something ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
squigglyruth said to me, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.
Anyway, first let me say what happened. We were playing "Articulate" at Angharad's house on Saturday. This is a fun game involving rapid descriptions of words. I'm not a fast thinker, nor a fast talker, so wasn't very good (well, OK at the descriptions, terrible at the guessing). When I was on Squigglyruth's team, she pointed out a few times where I wasn't so crap. I thought she did this particularly skilfully, and remarked that maybe she had picked this up in teacher training. She was a bit embarrassed by this.
I've done this before: remarked on a noteworthy characteristic of a friend, making them self-conscious about a positive trait of theirs. I'm usually very unobservant about the people around me, and can rarely describe people's character. So when I notice something I can put into words, I blurt it out. I mean it as a complement (I wouldn't say it if that wasn't the intention, since I very very rarely intend to offend), though they don't always take it as such.
Squigglyruth, it's a good thing that you know how to complement people effectively. Just because I think you might have learnt this as part of your teacher training, doesn't make it less of a good idea. Please don't become self-conscious about it.
Have I compound my faux-pas by posting this in public? I hope not. I don't think I really offended Squigglyruth (if I did, I hope she'll say and I can apologise properly), but I thought this was pleasantly recursive (here I am worrying about complementing someone badly on their complementing skills). And maybe LiveJournal is the answer to "l'esprit d'escalier". I like the image evoked by the phrase (on the stairs, leaving a french apartment), and often find myself reviewing conversations from an evening and considering what I thought of some of the more interesting comments. The downside is when I realise that I said something stupid, and there's now no way to take it back. Or thinking how nice it would have been to pursue a particular train of conversation, but it veered onto something else. In this case, maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.
squigglyruth said to me, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.Anyway, first let me say what happened. We were playing "Articulate" at Angharad's house on Saturday. This is a fun game involving rapid descriptions of words. I'm not a fast thinker, nor a fast talker, so wasn't very good (well, OK at the descriptions, terrible at the guessing). When I was on Squigglyruth's team, she pointed out a few times where I wasn't so crap. I thought she did this particularly skilfully, and remarked that maybe she had picked this up in teacher training. She was a bit embarrassed by this.
I've done this before: remarked on a noteworthy characteristic of a friend, making them self-conscious about a positive trait of theirs. I'm usually very unobservant about the people around me, and can rarely describe people's character. So when I notice something I can put into words, I blurt it out. I mean it as a complement (I wouldn't say it if that wasn't the intention, since I very very rarely intend to offend), though they don't always take it as such.
Squigglyruth, it's a good thing that you know how to complement people effectively. Just because I think you might have learnt this as part of your teacher training, doesn't make it less of a good idea. Please don't become self-conscious about it.
Have I compound my faux-pas by posting this in public? I hope not. I don't think I really offended Squigglyruth (if I did, I hope she'll say and I can apologise properly), but I thought this was pleasantly recursive (here I am worrying about complementing someone badly on their complementing skills). And maybe LiveJournal is the answer to "l'esprit d'escalier". I like the image evoked by the phrase (on the stairs, leaving a french apartment), and often find myself reviewing conversations from an evening and considering what I thought of some of the more interesting comments. The downside is when I realise that I said something stupid, and there's now no way to take it back. Or thinking how nice it would have been to pursue a particular train of conversation, but it veered onto something else. In this case, maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.
