Sometimes a communication error occurs and you end up looking incompetent. Or someone's feelings get hurt. Or something doesn't get done that should have. Mostly, there is nobody to blame, but it is the responsibility of those involved to sort out the crossed wires, and perhaps laugh a little, if they have a sense of humor.
I hate making mistakes, even if it isn't technically my fault.
Many years ago, a friendship ended because of what should have been a silly misunderstanding, about hair of all things. And this weekend a whole series of twisted messages left me standing with a shredded mess and extra work. It was like a Chinese finger puzzle; the harder I tried to solve the situation, the more trapped I became. Being responsible can sometimes make you seem irresponsible instead.
This weekend's mess is not something I can laugh about just yet, but the hair story is:
One of the "joys" of doing research was the waiting time involved. If a subject was taking a test, we had to be there to monitor the situation, but most of our work during the testing time was hands-off. And so we just sat amongst ourselves, gossiping.
Our lab had quite the colorful cast of characters including a beautiful woman who was randomly discovered on the side of the street to model in a major print campaign, a very gruff man from another country who thought women were idiots, a brutally-honest but very sweet-looking young woman who told me it was great that I was vomiting while pregnant because I really could stand to lose weight, and an uber-smart dynamo who somehow juggled both MD and PhD work while also raising her boyfriend's young daughter.
And then there was this guy who kept insisting that when he was younger, he was handsome. He showed us photos of "himself" from high-school as "proof." He was an odd character (but not as strange as another dude in the lab who actually had an identical twin who was similarly wacky - they should have gotten their own television show.) He was annoying at times, and endearing at times. Our desks were near each other, so we frequently chatted. He was my friend.
Well, one night at the MRI machine, I was hanging out with the model. Our subject was in the machine, and we were eating the impressive array of food that only NYC can deliver. She was probably giving me fashion or makeup advice, because I would have asked, given her impeccable appearance. And somehow the conversation swung around to "I swear I used to be handsome" man.
He kept saying how he wanted to grow his hair, and yet it was super-short with lines through it. Since the model and I were talking about our own hair at that point, I mentioned how I had never seen someone with that particular guy's hairstyle, and wondered why he kept it so short if he wanted to grow it.
The model laughed at my ignorance, and told me the "lines" were hair plugs.
Suddenly I understood, and we moved on to a completely new topic, as conversations tend to do.
But the next day, "I swear I used to be handsome" man approached me, hurt. He yelled, "If you wanted to know about the lines on my head, you should have asked me directly!" He was clearly embarrassed, and he absolutely did not believe me that it wasn't some sort of burning curiosity that I had brought to the model behind his back, but instead was something that happened to come up in the course of conversation.
No matter what I said, he didn't believe me. And so our friendship ended over a misunderstanding about hair plugs.
