Passing Notes

I believe that people don't really evolve very much after high school. I am fairly certain that I have even discussed this in earlier blog entries but I digress. So many of the behaviors and actions that are prevalent in high school might be muted as adults but the tendencies are always there.

One aspect of those bygone days is note passing. Let's really think about this for a moment. Isn't texting just another form of note passing? You want to talk to someone or you want to talk about someone to someone else then you send a text. Instead of secretly passing a paper through the aisles, you pick up your device, fingers move quickly to express thought and voila...note sent.

But again, I digress. The reason that prompted this entry is due to some incidents in the past few months that I have encountered in the work place. Sadly these incidents all revolve around women so I can't begin one of my sociological experiments but hear me out nonetheless.

In many meetings a colleague or a senior manager will take a pen and write a note to me either directly in my notebook or on a piece of paper and pass it to me. I find this behavior to be very peculiar because as a sometimes teacher, I would immediately notice this comportment in a classroom. I find it hard to believe others would not but it is the teacher in me to look for these transgressions.

What I also find odd in this note passing/writing is that it is often accompanied with an explanation in a whisper of what the note means. I ask myself when this happens "Then why write or send the note anyway when you are going to explain it to me? Just say what you need to say!" I usually nod and try to get back to paying attention to the meeting or to continuing to present the meeting materials.

And here's where the difference is between high school, I don't remember this accompanying explanation. There was just a note and you understood or you didn't. If you didn't, then you'd meet up with the person in the hallway between classes or call that person after class. Perhaps I am forgetting what it really was like because I have such a distance from those times. Occasionally there was the ever covert hand cupping against the other person's ear maneuver to explain. Mostly this was used in urgent situations such as in "that person likes you" or "can I copy your homework"? Rarely was it used to annoy you while you are trying to do something serious - like pay attention in a meeting.

Perhaps I'm waxing nostalgic and should take a time machine back to those days and see myself during those moments of surreptitious communication. I doubt that even if I did, I would notice behavior that's evolved much over time.