Nonverbal Communication in Everyday Ramblings

Wednesday night it was unexpectedly dry as well as being quite cold so I walked the river at dusk to get over to my Weight Watchers meeting. This grainy shot is from my phone of the 101 year old Steel Bridge, which I had just walked over to get to the east side.

I enjoyed that walk very much. And as now we have this incredible (for us) wind chill that makes it plain unbearable to be out for more than a few blocks even all layered and wrapped up. This morning we had snow.

We are a city that does not do well with snow. We had an 8:30 testing meeting scheduled this morning in the building I work in and it was this crazy scramble to see who could get in and what to do. In the end we decided to have it as three of us made it in. We did amazingly well considering that the most important players ended up calling in.

They had me hook up my laptop up to the projector and share my screen and the technology all worked perfectly. New Guy has Pacifica’s reimaged laptop and it turns out that it was not in good shape when she turned it in. There was actually a crack in the case that means not only was it dropped, but it must have bounced around a bit too. The reimage guys said they’d never seen anything like it.

When Mr. T handed New Guy the laptop on Monday there was nothing with it. No case, no power cord, nothing. I had New Guy beg for a power cord and we both brought ours up to the conference room this morning. Forty minutes into the meeting after being docked for a week he got a message that said…”You need to replace your battery…” . He got up and plugged his power cord into the machine and into one of the handy plugs in this particular room’s floor.

I know them well. I teach yoga in there.

So maybe an hour and a half later I got a message on my machine saying my battery was at 7% and I might want to plug it in.

This is the part that makes me want to cry. Without saying a word, New Guy got up and came around the table we were sitting at and took my power cord and plugged it into my machine and the floor.

Not only is he neurologically typical, he understands nonverbal communication really well. It is been so long since I have had that kind of communication with a coworker I almost forgot it was possible. I am like that. I do things like that for people. Pay attention. Make myself useful.

Seriously, it makes me want to cry with gratitude. And in recognition of how extraordinarily difficult my work life has been.

We had a difficult day on Wednesday. Jewel, the allied member of the Evil Empire (the one that so kindly told me I could get fired for taking my chair home) clomped into Mr. T’s office (she clomps) and said that we were talking so loud she couldn’t work. So he sent us an email and suggested we find a conference room to work in.

A little while later much to my relief he told us privately he didn’t think we were being too loud. The thing is…the day before; she had been straining to hear everything I told New Guy so she could correct me. Which she did repeatedly throughout the day, unbidden. How exhausting that must have been for her! No wonder she complained.

Arghh!

And you are all going…that’s nice but what about Mr. Fine China?!?

In an unnerving fashion right away we resumed the rhythm of correspondence that we had going all the years ago and then on Tuesday there was a break and I thought okay, he’s got something going on…and he did…his mother died.

He managed to get back from Las Vegas to be with her when she passed and it was peaceful. He was close to her, single mom, two boys. His brother made it in that afternoon.

So the meet-up is postponed until he makes it through the arrangements and the obligations and the disorientation of it all.

This whole thing, the blindingly clear message from the universe that this was the time to reach out to him, the ease and affection with which we picked up the communication again, just the possibility of an ongoing friendship, and then this fundamental loss for him has thrown me for a big emotional loop. Wow.

That’s why I have yoga, and Sam and you all I guess. :)

Tomorrow we have our big annual computer upgrade. I will be thrilled when that is over.