Habits, um, hard to break

People appear to be frightened of pauses in their verbal offerings.

First, a little scene-setting. I was sitting at the PC, having just done my GST. Some necessary background information is we have ditched our landline in order to put an end to unwanted calls from Rashiv (not his real name) in Mumbai reporting a fault with our internet and asking for a few trivial details such as passwords, pin numbers and inside leg measurements. We now rely on mobiles only.

Now, I needed to make a phone call so I picked up the phone which is within easy reach. I tapped a few numbers before remembering that the landline connection had been closed. Easy mistake to make.

I then picked up my mobile and went to tap in the number again. What I had picked up was, of course, not my mobile but the calculator I had been using for my GST.

As you can imagine, it failed to connect to the number I was dialling. I mustn’t be too hard on it, though; that little piece of technology can tot up numbers or divide stuff in a trice. For this device, multiplying something by three then dividing by 23 is a doddle.

Finally, I made it to my phone. Third time lucky.

Okay, trying to phone on a calculator you can put down to geriatric dizziness, but going to the old landline phone is justifiable because old habits die hard (and at last we have arrived at a theme).

Madam Dog has also illustrated this adage. The station wagon she rides in is usually backed into position by the house. If the tailgate is up it’s a hop, step and jump from the house door into the back of the wagon.

But remember, old habits die hard. One day, one of us had, for some reason, parked the car head first. Madam Dog in her excitement

I’m not. I think pauses add drama. Sometimes I use a long pause for heightened drama and once I even ran two pauses together but so skilfully did I do it that you couldn’t tell where one pause ended and the next one began.

Still, I suppose these examples pale into insignificance beside the dreaded habit of smoking which does indeed die hard. It is now proved beyond doubt smoking is a leading cause of statistics.

Handedness may not strictly be a habit but it still illustrates the adage well. Due to over-exuberant use of a garden trowel I injured my right arm recently, rendering it worthless for a while. Trying to unscrew the cap from a bottle with the left hand, as well as a multitude of other everyday tasks really drove home to me that your handedness is a hard habit to break.

Sorry but must dash. My calculator is ringing. Might be Rashiv.