Communication

The other day I was giving someone a ride to work and, although I thought I had an idea as to the general area where we were headed, I was confirming my directions with him as we went. At one point, on a farm road going into the orchards, there was a “V” in front of us where our road split into two roads each branching slightly off the original trajectory.

Approaching the “V” at a decent speed I casually asked to confirm that we wanted to go left. To this inquiry my companion quickly replied with a twinge of alarm in his thick Russian accent, “No! Straight!”. With his “No” registering in my brain first, I began breaking and turning onto the other branch at which point he again emphasized with even more alarm “Straight! Straight!”

Thinking about the miscommunication as I proceeded to school, I realized that both of us had said some rather foolish things that seemed quite clear to ourselves. In asking if we should turn left, I had no intentions of steering my car into the fence that was directly to our left and I am quite confident that he wasn’t asking me to drive straight into the boulder marking the middle of the “V” for which we were aimed. Yet in my mind the idea of taking the left branch (as opposed to the right branch) made perfect sense. Likewise with him, as the road we wanted was nearly straight in front of us.

If we can misunderstand each other concerning something that is directly in front of both parties involved, and there are only two real options, how are we supposed to communicate concerning more complicated things?