There’s a Bathroom on the Right

A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is named William.

Include me out. 

Samuel Goldwyn

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“You said …”

“You must have misunderstood.”

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“I told you …”

“I have no recollection of that.”

How many times have you had a conversation like that?

Is there a way to avoid these problems?

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I worked on many cases with a colleague for over 30 years. I trusted him. He screwed up in a case. He prevailed upon me to help him get his ox out of the ditch. Because I thought he was a friend as well as a colleague, I agreed to do that on a discounted basis and saw no need to send him a contract or even confirm it with an email.

I prepared briefs, a response to the motion for sanctions filed against him, and laid out a strategy that solved all of his problems. When I sent him an invoice, he didn’t pay it. When I asked him about it, he simply replied, “I don’t remember it the way you do.”

He stiffed me for $1,700, but I’m not bitter (Ha!). Could be worse I suppose. Sometimes people screw their friends over as little as 30 pieces of silver. Nothing worse than the stench of dead friendship.

Rule #1: Lessons learned lead to wisdom!

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Rule #2: If IT’s not in writing, IT doesn’t exist. [1]

Abstract Explanation: When you said what you said, or I said what I said, something existed. If we confirmed that in writing something still exists; if not, two lonely, dusty memories are all that remain. They may or may not coincide.

Initial impressions may vary. Memories of those impressions travel through the filters of noise; deficient hearing; wishful thinking; cognitive biases; time; the stories we tell ourselves about what we remember; and, the mind’s natural tendency to take our impressions and conform them to our worldview so that EVERYTHING makes sense [2] (otherwise, we have what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance”).

That’s a lot of layers for a memory to get through to make it from initial impression to present consciousness. [3] Any way you slice it, unless someone puts something in writing, a single IT no longer exists. You may have your IT, and I may have my IT. What are the odds that they coincide? If your answer is “even odds,” you win the prize for best oxymoron.

How do those odds change when the stakes increase?

From The Good Life by Harvard psychiatrist, Robert Waldinger and Harvard psychologist, Marc Schultz:

Just try to remember what you had for dinner last Tuesday, or who spoke with you on this date last year, and you’ll get an idea how much of our lives is lost to memory. The more time that passes, the more details we forget, and research shows that the act of recalling an event can change our memory of it. In short, as a tool for studying past events, the human memory is at best imprecise, and at its worse, inventive.

That ends the theoretical part of this article. If you hang in there with me, this gets easier and a lot more fun.

So What?

Clear understandings grease the wheels of our society and make everything run smoother. A well-oiled society is a happy society.

We can eliminate a large percentage of misunderstandings by doing one simple thing: confirm your initial understanding in writing. If you really want to bell the cat, ask your counterpart to tell you if you have misunderstood anything.

Clear communication is wise.

Unclear communication is foolish. 

“Be impeccable with your word.” [4]

After making you ponder all that ponderous theory, I will reward the uninitiated with an introduction to a humorous side of misunderstandings known as “mondegreens.”

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Mondegreens

I found this term in a clever little book called, How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind by the venerable psychologist, David G. Myers. I commend it to you.

There was once a Scottish ballad that went like this:

They hae slain the Earl of Murray,

And hae lay him on the green.

As a child, a writer in the early 20th Century, Sylvia Wright, heard it this way:

They hae slain the Earl of Murray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

Thus, twas born the “mondegreen.”

Since then, strange people with nothing else to do have studied mondegreens and posted them on websites for mondegreeners. That may sound fatuous, but it beats researching the best ways to poison your beautiful wife, which is what some dentists do in Colorado.

Other Examples:

·     “You Who Unto Jesus” becomes “You-hoo unto Jesus.”

·     “Excuse me while I kiss the sky,” by Jimi Hendrix, becomes, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.”

·     From the band OneRepublic: “too late to apologize” becomes “too late to order fries.”

·     Madonna’s “like a virgin touched for the very first time” becomes “like a virgin touched for the thirty-first time.”

·     The Eurythmics’ “sweet dreams are made of this” becomes “sweet dreams are made of cheese.”

You can find those examples and more details about mondegreens in Dr. Myers’ book.

In my personal hunt for mondegreens, I was heartened to discover that local linguistic luminary, Bryan Garner, included the word (with examples) in his most recent Modern English Usage (Fifth Edition), another book I commend to you. Bryan defines the word as “a misheard lyric, saying, catchphrase, slogan, or word.” (p.719).[5]

Bryan lists some great examples, like:

·     Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t it make my brown eyes blue” becomes “Donuts make my brown eyes blue.”

·     Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” becomes “Secret Asian Man.”

·     The Beatles’ “She’s got a ticket to ride” becomes “She’s got a tick in her eye.”

·     “Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night,” becomes “Wrapped up like a douche in the middle of the night.” For years, I thought it really was “douche”, and the song writer was pretty cheeky.[6] After hearing the correct lyrics, I still don’t understand it (“revved up like a deuce”? What the hell does that mean?), but if I am ever on Jeopardy and the topic is “song lyrics,” I’m golden!

·     Finally, my favorite: Creedence Clearwater’s “There’s a bad moon on the rise” becomes “There’s a bathroom on the right.”

Now, for your hard work of trudging through this motley mishmash, I have rewarded you with the secret behind the title.

Conclusion

Don’t trust your ears or your memory.

What we hear alone is a poor source of truth; there is no one more unreliable than an earwitness.

Most people hear what they want to hear and remember it the way they want to remember it.

If it is worth discussing, and you have the opportunity, put your understandings in writing.

If it’s not in writing, it doesn’t exist.

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“Excuse me, where is the bathroom?”

“There’s a bad moon on the rise.”

“Got it!”

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I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.

Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood. 

Originally written for Nina Simone and later popularized by The Animals.

[1] If something is in writing, something exists. Obviously, that does not mean that it is true or reliable. Examples: weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; election fraud; the miracles of goat glands (promoted by Dr. John R. Brinkley in the 1930s); and, all forms of fiction.

[2] The Toltecs call this our “Personal Dream.”

[3] And I have probably left out a number of other memory modifiers.

[4] The Four Agreements.

[5] If Bryan is reading this, he probably has a red Sharpie in his hand unconsciously correcting all of my errors. That’s okay. I’m here to learn.

[6] Bruce Springsteen wrote the song, but Manfred Mann’s Earth Band covered it and had a big hit,