Wednesday, June 27, 2012

The many facets of "Oh..."

So yesterday I was out with my son. As it was a bit breezy, I put him in the new sweater my friend had knit for me. On my way to the subway, an older black gentleman smiled and was commenting on how cute we seemed to be...until he actually saw Ben to whom he remarked "Oh..." There were so many questions and thoughts in the delivery of that one little, monosyllabic word, "Oh...". I don't know if he was upset that this was a white baby; that he thought I must have been the nanny taking out my ward for the afternoon; was he upset that the little hood on the sweater had devil horns? What I do know was that he was surprised and not pleasantly. And I was left thinking "Yeah, whatever..." Later that afternoon, I passed by another, yet younger
black gentleman, the size and shape of a bouncer. As he passed, I heard an "Oh!" as in "Oh, he's so CUTE!" Same little word, totally different delivery, totally different meaning. To him, he just saw a cute baby, in a cute sweater and on a nice day. This indeed could be an example of the generation gap, here. It also is a prime example of an improv game I used to play where you would have a conversation with only the words 'yes' and 'no'. It's all in the delivery. Discuss... Peace --Alex

posted by funkweee @ 7:07 PM 0 comments