Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Communication’s the name of the game… or maybe not in Chris’s house

Chris is missing in action this week, probably out with Bodmin, fleeing a pack of vengeful dogs, so his teenage daughter Maya has stepped into the breach…

Iwrote a My Weekly column for my father once before (while he was still in a post New Year’s Eve fog and unaware what I was up to) but I decided it was time for another attempt now that I am older and wiser. Or perhaps just older.

Like father like daughter, my life is filled with cats and a great deal of laughter, usually immediately following the events he writes about in these very columns.

Having read my father’s columns for some time – or even just once, really – you’ll probably have got the impression that his life is full of wacky misadventures, with my mother and I laughing and enjoying our far more normal lives. However, I’m here now to break the news to you that the whole family is a bit, well, quirky…

For example, a lack of communication skills seems to run in the family. A few months ago, my friend asked me a question. I turned and looked at her for a disturbingly long period of time before turning away again.

It was only several minutes later that it occurred to me that not only had I failed to respond to her question; I hadn’t even smiled, and had just fixed her with a blank stare.

This strange reaction of mine only made sense to me recently, when another friend visited my house. We entered and said hello to my parents before going to my room, where she told me an alarming fact about my mother.

For years, every time she’s come over, my mother would ask how she was and she would reply “good”, followed by returning the courtesy and asking how my mother was.

This sounded entirely like a regular family so far, so I wasn’t entirely sure what the issue was. Then it was made clear – my mother had never once replied to the question “how are you?”

I shared this revelation with my father and together we decided to confront her. We asked her why she never answered that question, and she gave such a startlingly honest reply that I was taken aback. Without flinching, she looked me in the eyes and said, “I’ve stopped listening by then. It’s just a pleasantry.”

That may be so, Mum, but you are still the first person I have ever met to have lost interest in a conversation before the “how are yous” are over with.

Had she ever even listened to my friend’s response? Was she even aware of herself asking the initial question? Nobody was asking for more than a simple “I’m good”, and yet even that seemed too much for her to bear.

So yes, I have inherited something from both of my parents. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is hard to say, but I think that on balance we make it work.

Then again, our poor communication skills might be why we can never get Alexa to work properly.

my friend told me an alarming fact about my mother

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