Juxtapose

There are times for everyone when life deals out a suspicious looking hand that leaves one without even a remote idea of what to do with it. Does one lay down the ace and sock it to the man or, perhaps, simply bide his time until a more appropriate occasion arises?

Faced with such a hand today, I chose a bit of both. I was doing my normal office managerial duties - the stapling, the punching, the billing, the appointing, the greeting, the smiling, the redirecting, and the filing - when a regular as of late came in the door. A man of thirty-fiveish, with tattoo sleeves, a fuzzy head, and a goatee, he weighs an easy three hundred and stands a likely six feet tall, and possesses an inexorable propensity to apologize for nearly any minute grievance anyone could ever imagine might be capable of an equally minute dollop of forgiveness. He strides into the room every time he visits, bends down, leans his crossed arms on the desk in front of me, and nearly whispers that he's come for a visit at such-and-such a time and that this time it will only be a short visit because he really doesn't want to put anyone out. He apologizes for being five minutes late, five minutes early, or for being on time but looking too rushed and upsetting the mood of the waiting room. I tell him (for the fiftieth) that he has no need to apologize and that the doctor would be thrilled to see him, positively THRILLED, and he ambles over to a chair and sits down. He pretends to read for a few minutes and then, out of nowhere, asks randomized questions. He listens to my answer, replies somewhat apologetically, as if he's just realized that such questions may be disruptive to my work, and immediately returns to the pretense of being engrossed in Reader's Digest. ?When do you go back to school?? ?Sooooo... How long has it taken to grow your hair out like that?? ?You must love it here at this office, HMMMM???? ?Do you think you'll come back here to work after you graduate?? ?Do you think the doctors are mad at me, because I really don't mean to be a bother...?

I also occasionally receive compliments. ?Long hair. It's very nice.? I give a polite ?Thank you,? smile, type something on the computer. ?You have the Lara Croft braid going on there, eh??

Me: ?Ermm. I suppose.?

Today, however, he raised his head from Reader's Digest and asked some question, quite out of the blue as usual, that led to him asking me whether I had heard his singing voice. He spoke over me to Dr. K, who was behind me, asking, ?Dr. W, have you told her about my singing voice?? He said that no, in fact, he hadn't, and moved off to make some doctorly phonecalls.

In situations like these, I have become a master at providing the encouraging Ambiguous Laugh. It's the laugh that appears to be quite genuine and is not at all hearty but conveys a sense of encouragement. It doesn't say, ?This is the most hilarious thing ever.? Instead, it teeters between having the distinct sense of, ?Teehee, that's a silly witticism on your part and I'm amused? and ?Go on telling your serious story ? I'm lightly chuckling due to being incredulous and interested in what you have to say!? It's the laugh that can and will be taken either way depending on the perspective of the other person. If they are attempting to be funny and are saying something in jest, they will realize that I have caught on to their witty jabs and will become more grandiose. If they are, indeed, in the midst of telling a serious factoid about themselves or a life experience, they will turn their tone of voice into something that conveys that sense of, ?Oh yes! I know it must be difficult to believe, but....?

I use this laugh specifically in situations like these in order to avoid the awkwardness of laughing at the serious or of squelching the joy of whatever witticism is thrown at me by falsely believing it to be something else. I use it to avoid committing the cardinal sin, as it were, of Making Friends and Influencing People; that is, of not making people feel like you are completely and utterly engaged in what they have to say. Dale Carnegie, bless his heart, has taught me, if nothing else, that in nearly all social situations, the keys to keeping people happy are addressing them by name and always keeping in mind that every person's favorite subject to talk about is to talk about themselves. My Ambiguous Laugh is my personal method of purveying that sense of genuine understanding to clients who are otherwise strangers to me. And the fact that ?strangers? has the word ?strange? in it is no mere coincidence.

This particular afternoon, however, the Ambiguous Laugh caused my friend to continue on, though I was fairly sure that he was making a random funny about his croaking singing voice. ?I grew up singing gospel and then matured to opera. I sang at every opera house in North America and Canada, as well as Madison Square Garden.?

It was at this point that I decided that the joke was getting rather bloated and stale. Let's not go overboard on the exaggeration, hm? Andrew often accuses me of overusing my, as we call it, ?writer's embellishment,? but I don't think I have ever gone so far in hyperbole as this guy apparently was. He briefly went back to Readers Digest but immediately popped back up, ?You know, Madison Square Garden.... where Elvis performed? I mean, I loved that, but my favorite this was playing King Arthur in Camelot.?

I was fairly incredulous. The Ambiguous Laugh had backfired and I was considering aborting the mission by going into the back room and shuffling papers back and forth for a while so it sounded like I needed to do something back there.

?Yes. Would you like to hear me sing??

Ambiguous Laugh again.

Without delay, he opened his mouth and belted out Snow White's ?Once Upon a Dream? with such convincing bass tremble and vibrato and with such astoundingly belly-deep sound that I sat and couldn't help but smile. He sang the whole song, explained something or other about some other variations to the tune according to this or that group of Disney opera experts, and promptly launched into that age-old The Unsinkable Molly Brown musical classic that we all know and love, ?I'll Never Say No To You.?

A few bars in, he heard Dr. K talking on the phone in the back, immediately lowered him bass to a whisper, finished off the bar he was singing, and apologized for singing while the doctor was on the phone. He was sure we'd hate him after that. He knew we'd just burn his file after that!!

After his appointment he said, ?Peace,? threw up the good old V fingers, and was out the door. I turned to Dr. W and said with a grin, ?Well. That was interesting.? He said, ?He's done that before... Where else would this happen to you, Cassie??

?Nowhere else, Dr. Weinbeck. Nowhere else.?